Syrian forces bombarded parts of the shattered city of Homs on Saturday and for a second day blocked Red Cross aid meant for civilians stranded for weeks without food and fuel in the former rebel stronghold, activists and aid workers said. The renewed government assault came a day after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had received "grisly reports" that President Bashar al-Assad's troops were executing, imprisoning and torturing people in Syria's third largest city.
"In an act of pure revenge, Assad's army has been firing mortar rounds and machine guns since this morning at Jobar," said the Syrian Network for Human Rights, naming a neighbourhood adjacent to Baba Amro, from which Free Syrian Army rebels pulled out this week after almost a month of siege and shelling. "We have no immediate reports of casualties because of the difficulty of communications," the campaign group said in a statement.
Syria's government says it is fighting foreign-backed "armed terrorists" which it blames for killing more than 2,000 soldiers and police. The United Nations says Syrian security forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians since the revolt against Assad's rule began in March last year.
Concern was mounting for civilians in freezing conditions in Baba Amro, where International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) trucks were still being held up by Assad's forces. The ICRC said the trucks would spend a second night in Homs and await permission to enter Baba Amro.
"The ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent did not enter Baba Amro today. Our negotiations with Syrian authorities continue in order to enter and help as many people as possible," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters in Geneva. Anti-government activists said they feared troops wanted to prevent the ICRC witnessing a reported massacre of rebels in Baba Amro, which had become a symbol of a year-long uprising.
A Damascus-based ICRC spokesman said Syrian authorities had given the convoy permission to enter but that government forces on the ground had stopped the trucks because of what they said were unsafe conditions, including "mines and booby traps". "There has been fighting there for at least a month. The situation cannot be good. They will need food, it's cold, they will need blankets. And there are injured there that need to be evacuated immediately," Saleh Dabbakeh told Reuters.
Syrian state television broadcast interviews with unnamed civilians in what it said was the stricken district, against a backdrop of empty streets, some with heavy conflict damage. Elsewhere in Syria, anti-Assad activists reported mass arrests and the killing of six soldiers, while the government's SANA news agency reported a suicide car bombing in the southern town of Deraa, a blast activists denied was a suicide attack.
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