A damaged car after air raids in Al Khalidiya neighbourhood of Homs yesterday.
DAMASCUS: Air raids on Homs killed a woman and two children yesterday, monitors said, as Syrian government forces pressed a ferocious assault on rebel-held parts of the city dubbed the “capital of the revolution”.
As the violence raged, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union meeting in Bahrain called for a political solution to Syria’s conflict, while regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia urged the EU to arm the opposition.
Homs, the third largest city in Syria, was one of the first to join the uprising against President Bashar Al Assad’s regime more than two years ago.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that in addition to the three civilians, at least 24 regime force members had been killed in the latest fighting in Homs.
On the second day of a major assault on the central city, “Syrian warplanes carried out air strikes on the Old City... destroying a house and causing three deaths,” said the Observatory.
“Regime forces also carried out heavy shelling of the districts of Khalidiya and the Old City, and the sound of explosions could be heard.”
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the woman and two children were killed in the strikes on the Old City, and that dozens of people had been injured.
“The army is continuing its attempt to enter Khaldiyeh, but it hasn’t succeeded so far,” he said.
An opposition activist in Homs said government forces had not entered Al Khalidiya yesterday but were still bombarding the district. “Hundreds of soldiers are involved in the offensive. I think it will last for a week or two because the regime is determined to enter at any price,” said the activist who only identified himself as Yazan.
The Observatory said troops were also targeting the rebel bastions of Bab Hud, Hamidiyeh and Bustan al-Diwan, calling the bombardments “unprecedented”.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague called on Syria’s regime to cease its “brutal” assault.
“It is clear that Assad is not interested in peace for Syria but rather is prepared to kill tens of thousands of innocent people and deprive millions more of humanitarian aid rather than work for a resolution of this conflict which has already killed too many,” said Hague. “I call upon the Assad regime to cease its brutal assault on Homs and to allow full humanitarian access to the country. The violence must end and those responsible must be held to account.”
In Manama, EU foreign police chief Catherine Ashton and the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the UAE and Saudi Arabia pledged to pool their efforts to help bring peace to Syria. They underscored “the utmost urgency of finding a political settlement of the Syrian conflict” and vowed to “spare no efforts” to help convene a conference on Syria, which the US and Russia have been striving to hold in Geneva. AFP
