Activists said 11 people were killed in the latest attacks in a week-long government siege of Homs, Syria’s third largest city, which has been at the heart of an uprising that broke out 11 months ago.
“Tens of shabbiha (Alawite militiamen loyal to Assad) along with army snipers and two tanks have deployed at the citadel and they are bombarding Old Homs with mortar rounds and anti-aircraft guns,” activist Malek Mohammad said by satellite phone from the city, 140 km (88 miles) north of Damascus.
Mohammed Hassan, another opposition campaigner in Homs, told Reuters by telephone that a 55-year-old woman was among those killed by shellfire on the Bab Amro district.
Assad has dispatched loyal forces into cites and towns across Syria to put down the uprising, drawing armed resistance, defections by soldiers from the Sunni Muslim majority, and international outrage at a crackdown that has killed thousands of civilians.
In a rare sign of compromise, Assad’s forces entered the besieged town of Zabadani in the mountains near the border with Lebanon after agreeing a ceasefire with rebels, according to Kamal al-Labwani, an opposition leader in exile.
Under the agreement, reached after a week-long tank and artillery bombardment that killed at least 100 in the town of 20,000, rebel forces will be allowed to pull out if they give up weapons and armour seized from government forces, Labwani said.
“Cooler heads in the military somehow prevailed over whoever has been issuing orders to shell Zabadani with heavy artillery. In the end it was in the interest of the two sides to prevent a bloodbath,” Labwani said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that three people had been killed in the bombardment yesterday.
On Friday, bombings targeting security forces killed at least 28 people in Syria’s second city of Aleppo, so far on the sidelines of the uprising.
Assad has ignored repeated international appeals, the latest from the European Union, to halt his crackdown.
However, the world remains divided over how to end the conflict. A week ago, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution sponsored by Western and Arab states that backed an Arab League call for Assad to step down.
Saudi Arabia has circulated a similar draft for the UN General Assembly, where there is no power of veto.
But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said yesterday that Moscow could not support a move resting on “the same unbalanced draft resolution text”.
The dispute brings no relief to Homs, where activists say the government offensive on mostly Sunni Muslim rebel-held areas has killed at least 300 people in the past week.
Food and medical supplies were running low in blockaded areas and many people were trapped in their homes.
YouTube footage provided by activists showed a doctor at a field hospital next to the body of the woman of 55 reportedly killed yesterday. “Shrapnel hit her in the head and completely drained her brain matter,” he says.
Accounts could not be independently confirmed as Syria restricts access by most foreign journalists.
The 46-year-old Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has dominated the majority Sunni country since his late father took control in a 1970 coup.
Security forces have made house-to-house raids in Homs in the last two days. The bodies of three people shot by snipers were pulled from the streets yesterday, activists said. YouTube footage from Friday showed two tanks said to be on the edge of Bab Amro, one firing its main gun across a highway. “The indiscriminate shelling is killing mostly civilians,” said Fawaz Tello, of the opposition Syrian National Council, arguing that Assad wanted to avoid pushing his troops into street fighting and was banking on the bombardment to force rebel fighters to withdraw.
In Damascus, gunmen shot dead a senior Syrian military doctor outside his home in northern Damascus yesterday, the state news agency SANA said.
It blamed an “armed terrorist group” for the assassination of Brigadier-General Issa al-Khouli, whom it described as a doctor and hospital director. He was the most senior figure to have been reported killed in Damascus.
His killing followed a four-hour clash in the capital on Friday night pitting Free Syrian Army rebels against troops backed by armoured vehicles who had entered the neighbourhood of al-Qaboun, activists said.
The British-based Observatory said 10 soldiers had been killed in an ambush by army defectors using roadside bombs and hand grenades on Friday in the rebellious Idlib region.
In Douma, south of Damascus, an officer and eight soldiers defected along with a tank after clashes between army deserters and security forces, it said.
