Snipers and security forces killed five civilians on Wednesday in Syria’s flashpoint province of Homs, activists said as the EU announced plans to slap new sanctions on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad
The latest bloodletting came as US President Barack Obama called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Syria in a speech at the General Assembly in New York.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, quoting residents, said snipers shot dead a man in the Baba Amro neighborhood of the city of Homs and killed another in the town of Rastan.
A man and a woman were also shot dead by security forces in Homs, while a 24-year-old hit by a bullet bled to death in Talbisseh in the same province, it said.
Meanwhile, “security forces arrested three wounded people in a Homs hospital and took them to an unknown destination,” the observatory said.
The body of a young man was also found on Wednesday in al-Huweiz village in Hama Province further north, “days after he was arrested by security forces,” it added.
The bodies of two other men were handed over to relatives on Wednesday in the northwestern province of Idlib, where army and security troops have been conducting operations, it said.
Activists said security forces arrested prominent dissident lawyer Imad Drubi on Wednesday inside the main Homs courthouse.
The elderly parents of prominent pianist Malek Jandali were beaten up by pro-regime militiamen because of “the sympathy shown by their son” for pro--democracy protests, the Syrian Human Rights Committee said on Wednesday.
The latest UN estimates show that the death toll in Syria’s crackdown on dissent has increased by more than 100 to more than 2,700 people killed since mid-March, human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in Geneva.
“More than one hundred were reportedly killed in the week between the 12th and 19th of September,” she said.
Frustrated with the regime’s failure to heed global calls to halt the bloodshed, the 27-member EU prepared to slap a 7th set of sanctions against Syria tomorrow, diplomats said.
The new sanctions will include a ban on investments in the oil sector and on delivering bank notes and coins made in Europe, and will also target six firms and two individuals “directly linked to the regime” who are part of Assad’s “inner circle,” one diplomat said.
Meanwhile, Obama called for formal UN sanctions on Syria over the bloody repression.
“Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime and to stand with the Syrian people,” Obama told the UN General Assembly.
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