Blood-stained Homs crushed between resistance and reprisal

Mafraq, Jordan: Every day, rockets and mortars fired by the regime forces rattle the streets of Homs. Armed rebels ambush government military checkpoints. Hatred brews on either side of the avenues that divide the bloodstained Syrian city.

Homs has become the focus of the worst violence of the 11-month-old uprising, which appears to be morphing into a civil war with fearsome sectarian overtones. Syria's third-largest city has become the major centre of both resistance and reprisal, fuelled in part by increasingly bold army defectors who want to bring down President Bashar Al Assad's autocratic regime by force.

Early in the uprising, residents tried to recreate the fervour of Egypt's Tahrir Square, only to face siege upon siege by government forces for nearly a year. Homs now is a powerful symbol of the revolution.

With many neighbourhoods outside government control, the regime's tanks and snipers are again opening fire in an offensive that began early Saturday to root out pockets of resistance and retake control of an area that holds great strategic importance in Syria.

"You'll be shot dead, if you go out," Samar Rahim, 32, told The Associated Press in this Jordanian farming town along the Syrian border, one week after she fled Homs with her family. "Snipers are firing at anyone in the streets. That's why we left everything behind."

Rahim and other refugees interviewed by the AP described living in fear, hunkering down inside their Homs and desperately trying to protect their children. A woman who was three months pregnant was shot and killed when she ventured out on an errand, Rahim said. A 10-year-old boy on her street also was killed. Another neighbour was shot immediately when she opened her front door. "We didn't dare go out, not even for bread, fearing we would be shot," Rahim said.

Running away

She used her family's savings to flee 240 kilometres to Jordan, along with her husband, five children and her mother-in-law, who is paralysed.

In the latest operation, which began on Saturday, government forces have unleashed a relentless offensive against Homs, shelling residential areas as they try to root out any resistance. Hundreds are believed to have been killed there in the last five days.

According to Associated Press Television News video from recent days, rebels move carefully from one position to another overlooking suspected sniper hideouts.

"We don't have the same capabilities to retaliate with the same power," one of the fighters said. Al Assad's forces have tanks "and we only have this rifle," he added.

In the Baba Amr neighbourhood, doctors at a crowded medical clinic struggled to cope with the dead and wounded. Outside, bodies wrapped in white sheets were piled on a pickup truck. Despite the risk of attack, residents are still holding funeral processions. One corpse was carried through the streets on a truck recently as mourners recited prayers and fired their guns.

Amateur video posted online by activists on Wednesday showed empty streets with black smoke billowing from residential areas, with the sounds of explosions and crackle of gunfire in the background. Women and children are seen running for safety.

Killings

"The regime created this problem between Sunnis and the Alawites. That's why they are giving weapons to Alawites," said 30-year-old Abu Adnan, whose cousin was killed in Homs in recent days.

"He was taking part in a demonstration and shot by the shabiha. They are criminals. The regime is supplying them with guns to kill people," Abu Adnan said.

"I feel it is becoming even worse than Iraq, day after day," said Abu Abdul Aziz, who fled to Jordan with his family two weeks ago, fears his country is descending into an abyss.

Mafraq, Jordan (AP) Homs, a city of about one million, has shown great sympathy for the opposition since the early days of the uprising. In April, protesters carried mattresses, food and water to the main Clock Square, hoping to emulate Cairo's Tahrir Square, where activists demanded the downfall of the Mubarak regime.

Security forces quickly raided the encampment, shooting at protesters and chasing them through the streets. The onslaught only increased the intensity of the protests, fuelling a revolt that has posed the most serious challenge to the regime.

But as the conflict turns more violent, Homs has become the bloodied epicentre. The city shelters a large number of military defectors known as the Free Syrian Army, and many parts of Homs are outside the regime's control.

It also holds a now-explosive sectarian mix, with a majority from the Sunni community — which has been the backbone of the uprising — and large communities of Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect that has stood firmly by Al Assad, himself an Alawite. Some of Homs' most hardcore opposition neighbourhoods, such as Sunni-dominated Baba Amro and Khaldiya, lie next to Alawite districts, and revenge killings have broken out. If rebel forces keep gaining ground in the city, some believe they could ultimately carve out a zone akin to Libya's Benghazi, where rebels launched their uprising.

Over the years, many Syrians referred to Homs as "mother of the poor" because the low cost of living. Now, it's known as the capital of the Syrian revolution.