More than 80 people were killed in Syria on Thursday, most of them in a relentless blitz on the city of Homs, an attack US President Barack Obama decried as “outrageous bloodshed.”
Shelling erupted at daybreak, killing more than 50 civilians in the besieged central city and burning several bodies beyond recognition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At least 83 people were killed across the country on Thursday, the Observatory said.
Troops trying to crush opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have killed at least 400 people in a six-day onslaught on Homs, opposition activists say.
“The shells are raining down on us and regime forces are using heavy artillery,” said Ali Hazuri, a doctor in the Baba Amr district reached by telephone from Beirut.
Omar Shaker, an activist in Baba Amr also reached by telephone, said residents were hiding on ground floors as there were no underground shelters.
“When you venture outside, you can see craters every 10m,” he said.
Obama, in comments after White House talks with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, condemned “the outrageous bloodshed that we’ve seen,” and urged “a transition from the current government that has been assaulting its people.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron said al-Assad’s regime appeared determined to kill its own people.
“It’s quite clear that this is a regime that is hell-bent on killing, murdering and maiming its own citizens,” Cameron told reporters in Stockholm. “It really is appalling, the scenes of destruction in Homs.”
He called for “transition and change in Syria.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague stressed that they had no plans to help arm Syria’s opposition.
However, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday during a visit to Washington that the international community cannot afford to watch the “massacre” taking place in Syria without acting.
Davutoglu is urging an international conference to resolve violence that erupted when demonstrators began demanding last spring that al-Assad be removed from office.
Meanwhile, Germany backed a proposed joint Arab League-UN mission to monitor the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown on protests, but other major powers were more cautious.
Prospects for the mission that the Arab League chief has proposed to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon could depend on an Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting this weekend and the backing of the major powers.
As the international community struggles to find a new diplomatic response to al-Assad’s assault on protest cities, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle gave the strongest welcome to the Arab League-UN proposal.
“In addition to the establishment of a contact group of ‘friends of a democratic Syria’ we must also undertake a new attempt to resolve the crisis through the United Nations,” Westerwelle said in Berlin.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS