security label

Reuters

A wounded girl is seen in the Bab Amr district of Homs, a stronghold of the Free Syrian army

Syrian security forces intensified its assault on opposition areas in the restive central city of Homs on Monday, as the US closed its embassy in Damascus citing security reasons and Britain recalled its top envoy for consultation.

The London-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory said at least 67 people had been killed nationwide on Monday, 54 of them in Homs. This added to a death toll that activists say had reached 200 in a three-day offensive launched the day before Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a political transition in Syria.

The shelling on Monday targeted most heavily the Bab Amr district, a stronghold of the Free Syrian army, the group of army defectors who have emerged as the biggest challenge for the regime of Bashar al-Assad during the 11-month uprising.

Residents of Homs described a desperate situation as shells rained down on them. “It’s really, really bad, I’m sure its more than 400 rockets now,” said Danny Abdul Dayem, an activist in Homs reached by Skype. Only four doctors were in the neighbourhood to treat the wounded, he added.

Mr Abdul Dayem said the regime had been emboldened to launch an attack on Homs by the failure of UN diplomacy. “This is after the UN decision, the UN decision gave them the green light to hit,” he said.

Western powers are looking for ways of maintaining the pressure on Mr Assad following Saturday’s collapse of UN diplomacy. A contact group of western and Arab states is being set up to co-ordinate Syria policy and more European sanctions could be imposed on the regime.

The US said the operations of the US embassy in Damascus were suspended because the site was “not sufficiently protected from armed attack” and the government in Damascus had failed to respond adequately to American security concerns.

“The deteriorating security situation that led to the suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous path Assad has chosen and the regime’s inability to fully control Syria,” said Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the US state department.

In a more direct protest move, Britain recalled its ambassador to Damascus for consultations and summoned the Syrian ambassador to London for a meeting at the Foreign Office.

British diplomats said they hoped other western governments would take similar actions in the next few days. “This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime,” said William Hague, the foreign secretary. “There is no way it can recover its credibility internationally.”

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister due in Damascus on Tuesday, confirmed to reporters he would be carrying a message for Mr Assad from Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev but refused to give any hint of its contents.

Russia, which has a military base in Syria and sells weapons to the government, has been pressing for an acceleration of political reforms in Damascus. But Syrian opposition activists say no measure of reform can make the Assad regime regain credibility.

Following a barrage of outrage from western and Arab capitals, Mr Lavrov defended the Russian veto, insisting that the resolution had been pushed to a vote hastily and some of the reactions were “improper, somewhere on the verge of hysteria.”

Syrian government forces were also reported to be attacking the mountain town of Zabadani near Damascus, from which troops retreated after signing a ceasefire with local elders last month.

The Syrian state news agency said that “armed terrorist groups” were shelling Homs with mortars, denying regime involvement in the assault, and insisted that “terrorists” had attacked buildings in Zabadani.

Additional reporting by James Blitz in London, Hugh Carnegy in Paris and Courtney Weaver in Moscow

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