110 die as Homs bleeds
AMMAN: Tank, mortar and rocket bombardment by President Bashar Assad’s forces on the besieged city of Homs killed at least 110 civilians on Thursday, an activist group said.
“This number includes three families whose bodies were dug up from under the rubble of their homes, bodies brought to field hospitals and people who died their from their wounds today,” the Local Coordination Committees said.
Diplomats from Western and Arab powers, lining up meetings that could mean some decisions soon, condemned Assad. But having ruled out military intervention, they were struggling to find a way to convince him to step down.
Russia, meanwhile, said no one should interfere in the country’s affairs.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said in Stockholm Assad’s regime appears intent on killing its own citizens, calling for a regime change. “It’s quite clear that this is a regime that is hell-bent on killing, murdering, and maiming its own citizens,” Cameron said, adding: “What we’re seeing on our television screens is completely unacceptable ... it really is appalling, the scenes of destruction in Homs.”
He called for “the toughest possible response” from the international community so that “Assad stops his murderous tactics and that we see transition and change in Syria.”
The United Nations chief condemned the ferocity of the government assault on Homs. “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.
Meanwhile, Libya has ordered Syrian diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours, just days after the main Syrian opposition group took over Damascus’s mission in Tripoli, the official news agency reported Thursday.
The Libyan Foreign Ministry has given “72 hours for the Syrian diplomats to leave the country,” the official LANA news agency reported.
A cousin of Assad has won a legal bid to unfreeze 3 million euros ($4 million) held in bank accounts in Switzerland.