Suffering of Baba Amr continues

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 28 people were killed in attacks yesterday, nine of them in Homs, Syria’s third city.

The state news agency Sana reported the funerals of 18 security force members killed by “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Deraa, Idlib and the area around the capital, Damascus.

Deploring the outcome of an international “Friends of Syria” conference in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, opposition activists said the world had abandoned them to be killed by forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad.

“They [foreign leaders] are still giving opportunities to this man who is killing us and has already killed thousands of people,” said Nadir Husseini, an activist in Baba Amr.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had resumed negotiations with the Syrian authorities and opposition on behalf of trapped civilians.

Husseini said people in Baba Amr were suspicious of the ICRC’s local partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and did not want to work with a group “under the control of the regime”.

The ICRC denied this, saying the Syrian Red Crescent was an independent organisation. “Its volunteers are risking their lives on a daily basis to help everyone with no exceptions,” ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said in Geneva. Red Crescent had evacuated a total of 27 people from Baba Amr on Friday.

Four western journalists, two of whom were wounded in an attack that killed the American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik on Wednesday, have yet to be rescued from the shattered neighbourhood. Activists in Homs, a city of more than 800,000 people, located at the junction of highways from Damascus to Aleppo and the coast to the interior, described Friday’s Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis as a failure that had brought them no relief.

“I don’t really care about the Tunis conference. All I care about is getting help for my family in the besieged areas,” said Waleed Fares, contacted from Beirut. “The political calculations are not the same as the calculations for us revolutionaries.”

A video uploaded by activists in Homs’ Khalidiya district showed crowds at a funeral, shouting, “We swear to God we will not be silent about our martyrs”. In the background, clouds of smoke were rising from buildings that activists said had been hit by shell-fire. Civilians are enduring desperate conditions in Baba Amr. “We have hundreds of wounded crammed into houses,” Husseini said. “People are dying from lack of blood because we just don’t have the capability of treating everyone.”

The Tunis conference of western, Arab and other countries was intended to increase diplomatic pressure on Assad to end an almost year-long crackdown on opponents of his 11-year rule, in which thousands have been killed.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad would be held to account for the bloodshed and sharply criticised Russia and China which have blocked any UN measures against Syria.

But to beleaguered Syrians the speeches seemed remote. A doctor in the restive town of Zabadani said: “I’m really frightened that after all these efforts we will still end up like Hama in 1982, killed while the world waits and watches.”

Assad’s father Hafez crushed an armed Islamist uprising in Hama 30 years ago, killing many thousands of civilians and razing parts of the city with tanks and artillery in a three-week assault.

“The people of Zabadani resent what happened in Tunis,” said the doctor, who asked not to be named. “We need them to arm the revolution. I don’t understand what they are waiting for. Do they need to see half the people of Syria finished off first?”

Diplomacy is hamstrung because Russia and China, which did not attend the Tunis summit, oppose United Nations’ Security Council action and there is little appetite for military intervention in Syria.

Iran, Syria’s closest ally, denied as “sheer lies” charges by some western officials that Tehran had sent weapons to help the Syrian government.

“Iran’s stance on Syria is to support reforms that benefit the Syrian people and oppose foreign intervention in that country’s internal affairs,” Iran’s student news agency ISNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.

Despite the bloodshed, Assad is staging a referendum today on a new constitution which he claims will pave the way for a multi-party parliamentary election within three months.

The opposition has called for a boycott of the vote, deriding Assad’s reform pledges and demanding he step down.

Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu questioned how the vote could take place in the midst of so much violence. “On one hand, you say you are holding a referendum and on the other you are attacking with tank fire on civilian areas. You still think the people will go to a referendum the next day in the same city?” he asked.

In Baba Amr, Husseini said that he had “lost faith in everyone but God”, but the uprising would go on regardless.

“The shelling is just like it was yesterday. We have had 22 days of this. The women and children are all hiding in basements,” he said. “No-one would dare try to flee the neighbourhood, that is instant death.”