Homs under fire as Syria battle rages

Syrian forces continued their assault on Homs Thursday, bombarding rebel-held neighborhoods in a bid to restore control over the restive city, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees – an opposition group that organizes anti-regime protests – said at least 47 people have so far been killed in Homs on Thursday, warning that it expected the death toll to rise.

As dawn broke on Thursday, rocket and mortar fire rained down again on Baba Amro, Khalidiya and other districts, according to activists and residents.

Syria's official news agency, SANA, reported that an "armed terrorist group" had detonated a car bomb on Wednesday in the al-Bayyada neighborhood of Homs, killing civilians and security personnel without specifying the number of people killed or wounded.

Mazen Adi, a prominent Syrian opposition figure in Paris, said rebels loosely organized under the Free Syrian Army were fighting back and staging hit-and-run guerrilla attacks against government forces in Homs.

"The regime cannot keep tanks for long inside opposition neighborhoods because they will be ambushed," he said. "[They are] retaliating by hysterical bombing that is killing mostly civilians and with mass executions."

Al-Akhbar has been unable to reach contacts in Homs, and Mazen Darwich of the Damascus-based Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression said phone lines were down in the area.

The week-long assault on Homs has reportedly claimed hundreds of lives, according to activists, as the Syrian army and armed rebels fight it out for control of the city of 1 million.

The Syrian Human Rights Organization (Sawasiah) said in a statement that this week's assault on Homs had killed at least 300 civilians and wounded 1,000, not counting Thursday's toll.

Death tolls and accounts of violence are difficult to verify due to strict restrictions imposed on the media in Syria.

Death figures have been constantly disputed as a result, with several opposition and rights groups accusing each other of inflating figures for political purposes.

Darwich believes the latest campaign against Homs is doomed for failure, warning that greater military involvement will not resolve the situation.

"They [Syrian regime] have resorted to the military solution. I think that this is a failure...and it won't present anything except complicating matters more," Darwich told Al-Akhbar by phone from Damascus.

The solution to Syria's crisis lies in a political agreement, not continued violence, Darwich added.

"Unfortunately they [Syrian regime] haven't begun to build political solutions."

West seeks new road to Damascus

The United Nations chief condemned the ferocity of the assault on Homs, the heart of a revolt against President Bashar Assad that broke out nearly a year ago and is getting bloodier by the day.

"I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighborhoods, is a grim harbinger of things to come," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters after briefing the Security Council.

Ban sought to revive the suspended Arab observer mission, suggesting a joint mission with the Arab League.

The pan-Arab bloc's secretary-general, Nabil al-Arabi, said he had spoken with Ban on the proposed mission, which would include a UN envoy.

Western powers are still exploring ways to intervene in Syria, with the United States saying it was considering ways to get food and medicine into the country – a move that would deepen international involvement in a conflict which has wide geopolitical dimensions and has caused division between foreign powers.

In Washington, officials said the United States planned to meet soon with its allies to discuss alternative methods to address the Syrian crisis in light of the Russia-China double veto at the UN last Saturday.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the talks, which would include the opposition Syrian National Council, were aimed at helping the process "move toward a peaceful, political transition, democratic transition in Syria."

Any international move to bring in humanitarian aid could open a dangerous and complicated new chapter in the crisis, with air drops seen as expensive and ineffective and any land routes open to attack from Syrian forces.

But the White House said all options remained on the table.

"We never rule anything out in a situation like this," Carney said. "But we are pursuing a path that includes isolating and pressuring the Assad regime so that it stops its heinous slaughtering of its own people."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that any outside intervention would have the destructive effect of "a bull in a china shop."

Russia and China fear a Libya-style military intervention in the country that would advance Western geopolitical interests.

But that has not appeared to stop Western nations from pursuing plans to get involved in the Syrian crisis.

Turkey wanted to host an international meeting on Syria in a move to circumvent Russian and Chinese objections to foreign intervention.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said before flying to Washington for talks on Syria that Turkey, which once saw Assad as an ally but now wants him out, could no longer stand by and watch.

"It is not enough being an observer," he told Reuters.

Syria's Baath leadership has been a longtime nemesis of Israel, a rival to Arab heavyweight Saudi Arabia, and an ally of Iran.

An overthrow of the regime will dramatically alter regional power dynamics, and a civil war will likely devastate the country and reduce its influence in a scenario similar to Iraq.

Russia and China fear Western powers and Saudi-led Gulf Arab states are seeking to exploit the current crisis in order to remove an old foe in the region.

(Al-Akhbar, Reuters, AFP)