Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed dozens of rebel fighters who were attempting to break an army siege of the central city of Homs, state media and a monitoring group said.
SANA news agency quoted a military source as saying army units “confronted armed terrorist groups” trying to get into the Khaldiya neighborhood north of the besieged rebel area in the Old City in the heart of Homs this week.
Thirty-seven rebels were killed by the army, SANA said, without giving a figure for losses among Assad’s forces.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 45 rebels were surrounded and killed as they left the old city on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
Assad’s forces have surrounded rebels for more than a year in Homs, a center of the uprising against Assad in 2011 which turned into an armed uprising and civil war after the Syrian leader’s forces cracked down on protesters.
Hundreds of rebels have been killed in a week of fighting by an array of Islamist and more moderate fighters against an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The fighting comes less than a fortnight before planned peace talks in Switzerland aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian conflict going on for almost three years that has killed 130,000 people.
