Amman/Beirut: Syrian government forces attacked opponents of President Bashar Al Assad on several fronts yesterday, sending residents fleeing from one town near the capital and bombarding the city of Homs for an 11th day running, activists said.
Citizens of Homs — Syria's third largest city with one million people — faced a humanitarian crisis.
Food and fuel were scarce and most shops shut due to relentless shelling and rocket fire that have trapped people in their homes.
With Al Assad seemingly oblivious to international condemnation of the tactics employed to crush the uprising against his 11-year rule, Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia pushed for a new resolution at the United Nations supporting their peace plan.
The redoubled diplomatic effort came as the UN human rights chief chastised the Security Council for failing to act on Syria, saying Al Assad had been emboldened by its failure to condemn him.
"I am particularly appalled by the ongoing onslaught on Homs... According to credible accounts, the Syrian army has shelled densely populated neighbourhoods of Homs in what appears to be an indiscriminate attack on civilian areas," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a speech to the General Assembly in New York on Monday.
The Russian- and Iranian-backed Assad, whose Alawite-minority family has ruled the mainly Sunni country for 42 years, is struggling to put down street demonstrations and stop insurgent attacks across the country.
He dismisses his opponents as terrorists backed by enemy nations in a regional power-play and says he will introduce reforms on his own terms. Conflict flared anew on yesterday in Rankous, a country town near the capital Damascus that was hit by government shelling. Activist Ibn Al Kalmoun said phone lines had been cut and many residents had fled.
In Homs, a city in western Syria at the heart of the 11-month-old uprising, the pro-opposition neighbourhood of Baba Amr was struck at dawn by the heaviest shelling in five days, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights said.
Widespread looting
Food and fuel prices had tripled and gangs were looting houses, activists said. Shelling was also reported in the town of Rastan early yesterday.
Foreign media have had to rely on activists' accounts of the situation because the Syrian government restricts access, although reports from neutral organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch confirm the general picture of widespread violence.
At the United Nations, diplomats said a draft General Assembly resolution which supported an Arab League plan and called for the appointment of a joint UN-Arab League envoy on Syria could be put to a vote today or tomorrow.
The resolution is similar to a Security Council draft vetoed by Russia and China on February 4 that condemned the Assad government and called on him to step aside.
There are no vetoes in General Assembly votes and its decisions are not legally binding.
"The situation on the ground is unbearable," the Qatari president of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdul Aziz Al Nasser, told Al Jazeera Television.
"There is an idea for an Arab draft resolution, which I think will be distributed to the member countries today or tomorrow and will be voted on this week."
