A general view of the destruction in Al Sukkari neighbourhood, by what activists said was an air strike by the Syrian regime, in Aleppo, yesterday.
BEIRUT: A siege of Syria’s central city of Homs entered its 300th day yesterday, as troops loyal to President Bashar
Al Assad wage a campaign to oust rebel groups holed up there, the opposition said.
“Three hundred days have gone by since the start of the siege of the heroic city of Homs, capital and beating heart of the Syrian revolution,” the Syrian National Council, a key component of the main opposition National Coalition, said.
Homs, the country’s third largest city, was one of the first to join the anti-Assad revolt that began two years ago with peaceful protests but morphed into a bloody insurgency after a fierce regime crackdown on dissent.
Today, some 80 percent of the city is under tight army control, and troops use tanks, helicopters and other warplanes to bombard besieged rebel enclaves.
The army and security forces began the siege in June 2012, setting up checkpoints all around the rebel-held districts.
Daily battles rage on the edges of the insurgent neighbourhoods, and yesterday, the army pounded the districts of Khaldiyeh, Qarabis, Qussour and Juret
Al Shiyah.
“Three hundred days have gone by while the world has looked on... with all kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in this city,” the SNC said in a statement.
“Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, water and electricity have been cut off, as have communications and food supply... Civilians are deprived of medicine and treatment,” the opposition group added.
Activist Abu Bilal spoke to AFP via the Internet about life in a city under siege.
Homs is a strategic junction, linking Damascus to the majority Alawite coastline.
AFP
