Syria’s army killed at least six civilians Tuesday in the heaviest shelling of Homs for several days, monitors said, as the international community warned of a humanitarian disaster in the city.
The top human rights representative at the United Nations said the world body’s inaction had “emboldened” Syria’s government to unleash overwhelming force against its own civilians. “The failure of the Security Council to agree on firm collective action appears to have emboldened the Syrian government to launch an all-out assault in an effort to crush dissent with overwhelming force,” said Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights. The assault has been heaviest in the central city of Homs, which has been under a relentless barrage of heavy machinegun fire, tank shells, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades for 10 days. “The shelling of the Baba Amr neighbourhood began at dawn and is the most intense in five days,” Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday. “Two rockets are falling a minute on average,” the head of the Britain-based monitoring group told AFP by telephone, citing activists on the ground. “Six civilians died in the continuous shelling of Baba Amr neighbourhood this morning,” the Observatory said later in an emailed statement.
A video uploaded to YouTube by activists showed a powerful blast striking what they said was Baba Amr, sending flames shooting into the sky and a plume of black smoke up over the rebel stronghold. Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, an opposition activist group, said the shelling of Baba Amr was extremely heavy.
