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Syrian group urges armed intervention
NICOSIA / BEIRUT
Compiled from AFP, AP and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff
Syria’s opposition calls for ‘international protection for civilians’ in the central city of Homs, which is besieged by the forces of President Assad and a theater of deadly clashes between soldiers and alleged army deserters
Demonstrators protesting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad march through the streets on the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha near Daraa. REUTERS photo
A key Syrian opposition group appealed yesterday for international intervention to protect civilians in a besieged central city as security forces shot dead one person, raising the death toll from the latest government offensive in Homs to 17, activists said.
Declaring Homs a “humanitarian disaster area,” the Syrian National Council (SNC) urged the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League to act “to stop the massacre committed by the regime.”
The SNC called on the international community to send “Arab and international observers, instantly, to the city of Homs to oversee the situation on the ground, and prevent the regime from continuing to commit brutal massacres,” according to a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.
Syrian troops stormed a defiant neighborhood of the embattled city of Homs yesterday, kicking in doors and making arrests after nearly a week of violence pitting soldiers against army defectors and protesters demanding the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad, activists said. It was not immediately clear if government troops had regained control of the Baba Amr district, where the government is reportedly facing armed resistance from defectors who have taken refuge in the neighborhood and in surrounding districts. More than 110 people have been reported killed in the past week in Homs, a city of about 800,000 that has turned into one of the main centers of protest and reprisal during the nearly eight-month-old revolt against al-Assad, according to Ibrahim Hozan, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees activist network. The Syrian National Council, which groups the main currents of the opposition, also called in its statement for the evacuation of civilians away from “areas that are under shelling and destruction.” The group said the Syrian regime had “launched a large-scale attack” overnight Sunday to Monday on the neighborhoods of Homs and that “indiscriminate slaughter is being committed by the regime’s militias.”
The army, which has sought to crush the protest movement that erupted in March through force, was “using heavy artillery, rocket launchers and warplanes to bomb populated residential neighborhoods” in Homs, SNC’s statement said. “For the fifth consecutive day, the Syrian regime imposed a brutal siege on the brave city of Homs, aiming to break the will of its residents, and to brutalize its steadfast people who have dared to reject the regime’s authority and mandate, and insisted on demanding their legitimate rights for freedom and dignity,” the statement said. The violence comes despite claims by Syria that it is complying with an Arab League-sponsored plan to end the crackdown. The U.N. estimates that more than 3,000 people have been killed across Syria in a brutal crackdown by the security forces since anti-regime protests erupted in mid-March
Note : The question is ;
1. The majority of Syrian people want international intervention ?
2. If they do, then do they want their country turn into like Iraq ?
difficult situation......
considering that Syria is not like Libya...
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