Syrian city of Homs under siege; streets deserted
BEIRUT — The embattled Syrian city of Homs remained under siege for a sixth day Thursday with sporadic tank shells ripping into contested neighborhoods, residents throughout the city cowering in their homes and medical supplies dwindling.
“Nobody dares venture into the streets,” said a 65year- old resident named Mohamed, who said he could hear the blast of tank shells and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns clearly even though his home lies distant from the worst fighting.
A constant stream of videos, said to be from Homs and posted on Youtube, left a grim impression of streets cluttered with rubble from damaged buildings, houses collapsed on their owners and a constant flow of vic- tims being treated in makeshift medical clinics. The pictures, although hard to verify independently, showed clouds of black smoke cloak- ing nearly deserted streets.
Under such extreme conditions, with bodies believed trapped under the rubble, estimates of the death toll by activist organizations ranged widely, from about 50 to more than twice that.
Reaching Homs by telephone proved difficult Thursday, although cellphone service partially returned in the early evening. Much of the attention was focused on the neighborhood of Bab Amr, which has a strong contingent of anti- government activists, but it was hardly alone.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, put the death toll in Homs at 52, with 20 more killed elsewhere throughout Syria. But it noted that communication with Homs was particularly difficult.
The Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, a coalition of activists who help organize and document protests, put the toll in Homs at 110, with about an additional 20 killed elsewhere in Syria.
Activists have reported hundreds of deaths since the government began renewed assaults hours before Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at easing the crisis. There has been no independent confirmation of the death toll.