Tanks move in day after killing of reporters

Rockets, shells and mortar rounds rained on the neighbourhood, where armed insurgents have been holed up with terrified civilians for 20 days, activists said.

The Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods of Inshaat and Khalidiya also came under fire, they said.

Homs-based activist Abu Imad said tanks had entered the Jobar area in the south of Baba Amr.

“Explosions are shaking the whole of Homs. God have mercy,” Abdallah al-Hadi said from the city, where more than 80 people, including two western journalists and Syrian opposition citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, died on Wednesday.

Western diplomats said it had not yet been possible to retrieve the bodies of Marie Colvin, an American working for the Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

Homs-based activist Omar Shaker said food, water and medical supplies were running dangerously low in Baba Amr.

“Every minute counts. People will soon start to collapse from lack of sleep and shortages in food,” he said.

The army is blocking medical supplies to parts of Homs and electricity has been cut off for 15 hours a day, activists said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to arrange two-hour ceasefires each day, so far without success.

Several hundred people have been killed in Homs by troops using artillery, tanks, rockets and sniper fire.

Residents fear president Bashar al-Assad will subject the city to the same fate his late father Hafez inflicted on Hama, where thousands were killed in the crushing of an armed Islamist revolt in 1982.

To further isolate the Assad government, the European Union will impose further sanctions on Syria next week.

In the north-western city of Aleppo, security forces yesterday fired tear gas at hundreds of students at Aleppo University staging an anti-regime protest. Aleppo, like the capital Damascus in the south, has remained relatively quiet during the nearly year-long anti-government uprising. But the city has become increasingly tense, particularly in the university district.

Syrian security forces also lined up and shot dead 13 men and boys from one extended family, which has the same name as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Riad al-Asaad, in the village of Kfartoun in Hama province yesterday, activists in Hama city said. It was not immediately clear if the victims were related to Mr Asaad, who is based in Turkey and comes from the north-west province of Idlib.

The FSA is made up of army deserters and insurgents who are resisting security forces that have sought to crush protests against Mr Assad’s 11-year rule, which has been bolstered by his minority Alawite sect.

The state news agency, Sana, said three members of the security forces were killed and seven wounded by a bomb planted by “armed terrorists” near Idlib. It also reported the funerals of 16 security force members killed by rebels.

Mr Assad has called a referendum on a new constitution on Sunday, to be followed by a multi-party parliamentary election, which he says is a response to calls for reform.

The plan is supported by his allies Russia and China but western powers have dismissed it and the Syrian opposition has called for a boycott. Last night, Tunisia’s presidential spokesman said it will today propose a political solution to the Syrian crisis involving a peacekeeping force.

Adnan Mancer said that Tunisia would urge the Friends of Syria conference in its capital, Tunis, to back a Yemen-style transition, where president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down after months of unrest.

Mr Mancer said Tunisia was ready to take part in the peacekeeping force to back “a political solution because we totally oppose a foreign military intervention”.

The make-up of any such peacekeeping force would be crucial, as regional powers such as Sunni Saudi Arabia would not be seen as impartial by the pro-Shia regime in Damascus.