Monday, November 7, 2011

Syrian forces enter Bab Amro district as SNC makes international plea

Troops and militiamen loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad entered a residential district of Bab Amro in the repeatedly targeted city of Homs, residents and activists said on Monday.

The overnight storm of loyalists came after days of tank bombardment that killed scores of people and wounded hundreds.

Bab Amro has regularly seen street rallies, protesting the rule of Assad and calling on him to surrender power. Army defectors who had taken refuge in Bab Amro and helped defend the residential district have withdrawn, Reuters reported.
The Syrian National Council, the main opposition body against Assad and his regime, declared Homs an “humanitarian disaster area” and urged the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League to act “to stop the massacre committed by the regime.”

The opposition council said in a statement that it was calling on the international community to send “Arab and international observers, instantly, to the city of Homs to oversee the situation on the ground, and prevent the regime from continuing to commit brutal massacres,” AFP reported.

The group also said that the Syrian regime had “launched a large-scale attack” overnight Sunday to Monday on the neighborhoods of Homs and that “indiscriminate slaughter is being committed by the regime’s militias.”

The Syrian National Council, which groups the main currents of the opposition, also called in its statement for the evacuation of civilians away from “areas that are under shelling and destruction.”

The army, which has sought to crush the protest movement that erupted in March through force, was “using heavy artillery, rocket launchers, and warplanes to bomb populated residential neighborhoods” in Homs, it said.

“For the fifth consecutive day, the Syrian regime imposed a brutal siege on the brave city of Homs, aiming to break the will of its residents, and to brutalize its steadfast people who have dared to reject the regime’s authority and mandate, and insisted on demanding their legitimate rights for freedom and dignity,” it added.

The United Nations estimates that more than 3,000 people have been killed across Syria in a brutal crackdown by the security forces since anti-regime protests erupted in mid-March.

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