Syrian rebels warn of potential Homs massacre as regime troops advance

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/syrian-rebels-warn-homs-massacre

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Syrian government forces stepped up efforts to advance on opposition areas of the central city of Homs on Thursday amid warnings of a potential massacre following months of siege and starvation.

But reports from the scene described rebels clinging to their positions despite tank shelling, sniper fire and air strikes mounted to help government troops recapture several enclaves in the old city.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator for Syria, warned that the collapse of negotiations on a truce risked new bloodshed.

"It is alarming that Homs, whose people have suffered so much throughout these past three years, is again the theatre of death and destruction," the Algerian diplomat said in a statement distributed at UN headquarters in New York.

"We urge all the parties to return to the negotiating table and complete the deal which was on the verge of being signed."

Rebel groups say that around 1,300 people, mostly fighters, are still trapped inside neighbourhoods besieged by the army and national defence militia forces.

The UN security council was expected to discuss the deteriorating situation. But Syria has been overshadowed by the crisis in Ukraine, which has made western-Russian co-operation even more difficult. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, cut short a planned meeting with Brahimi in Geneva because of Thursday's Ukraine summit. Homs has been called the "Stalingrad of the 21st century" and compared to Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition, the main western-backed rebel group, issued an urgent appeal. "The regime has reduced what was the soul of the revolution to rubble and ruin. The international community must watch to ensure the regime does not massacre the remaining brave people left in the Old City," said Monzer Akbik, spokesman for the SOC president, Ahmed al-Jarba.

Homs was the scene of early protests against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 and has come to symbolise the destructive nature of Syria's civil war.

Brahimi oversaw a deal at otherwise unproductive talks in Geneva in January which allowed some 1,400 civilians to leave the old city unharmed. But further negotiations broke down after renewed heavy fighting this week. Dozens of rebels have surrendered to the government.

On Tuesday, the Syrian army launched an assault against the rebel-held areas and said it had "achieved key successes" and "killed a number of terrorists".

In the past few months, Assad government forces have recaptured several rebel-held areas and border towns, closing off supply routes from Lebanon and securing the main road leading north from Damascus towards central Syria, Homs and the Mediterranean. Earlier this week the army recaptured the Christian town of Maaloula in the Qalamun region. Assad has said he believes the war is turning in his favour.

More than 150,000 people have now been killed in a conflict which began with peaceful protests. About a third of the victims have been civilians, according to the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Millions have fled the country.

The Syrian government has been accused of using starvation as a weapon to force rebel-held areas into surrender. The SOC quoted one fighter as saying: "We don't have any leaves left on the trees. We've eaten them all."

The siege of the rebel-held neighbourhoods of Homs intensified after tunnels used to smuggle in supplies were destroyed by bombing and bombardments. The last attempt to lift the siege took place a few days ago, but some 25 fighters were killed when government forces targeted a car attempting to force a way out. On Wednesday, there were constant airstrikes on the Old City, but government forces were repulsed by a counter-attack by the rebel Free Syrian Army.