The opposition Syrian National Council appealed Sunday for the Arab League to immediately send observers to the besieged city of Homs and other hotspots of a bloody crackdown on dissent. The call came a day before a first group of Arab League observers is set to arrive in Syria to begin monitoring a deal the 22-member bloc agreed with the government in Damascus aimed at ending nine months of violence.
“Since early this morning, the (Homs) neighbourhood of Baba Amr has been under a tight siege and the threat of military invasion by an estimated 4,000 soldiers,” the SNC said in a statement received in Nicosia.
“This is in addition to the nonstop bombing of Homs that has been going on for days,” said the council, the main umbrella group of opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.
The central city of Homs has been a focal point of the Assad government’s crackdown on anti-regime demonstrations, as well as the site of fierce clashes between the army and mutinous soldiers.
A nine-member advance team of Arab monitors arrived in Syria on Thursday to pave the way for the observer mission to oversee the deal to end the crackdown, which the UN estimates has killed more than 5,000 people since March.
“The Syrian National Council demands that the Arab League observers go to Homs immediately, specifically to the besieged neighbourhoods, to fulfill their stated mission,” it said in the statement.
“In addition, we demand that the observers go to all the hotspots in Syria, or withdraw and conclude their mission if it is not possible for them to do so.
“We hold the Arab League and the international community accountable for the massacres and bloodshed committed by the regime in Syria,” said the opposition group.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has said he expects the Arab League observers to vindicate his government’s contention that the violence in the country is the work of “armed terrorists.”
Western governments and rights watchdogs blame the Assad regime for the bloodshed.
