Syria's Homs hit with 'heaviest shelling' in weeks

Syrian security forces carried out their heaviest pounding of Homs in a two-week offensive against the central protest city, an opposition activist on the ground said.

Syrian security forces on Friday carried out their heaviest pounding of Homs in a two-week offensive against the central protest city, an opposition activist on the ground said.

Picture downloaded from the Syrian opposition Local Coordination Committees in Syria photoblog is said to show Syrian army tanks patrolling the streets of Zabadani in the Damascus suburbs. (AFP Photo/)

"It's the most violent in 14 days. It's unbelievable -- extreme violence the like of which we have never seen before, with an average of four rockets every minute," said Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution.

"In addition to the districts of Baba Amr and Inshaat, Khaldiyeh and Bayyada were pounded on Friday, but the shelling of these neighbourhoods was not as intense as in recent days," he told AFP on the phone from inside Homs.

The activist said that an "unprecedented" number of military planes and surveillance aircraft were overflying Homs.

"There are thousands of people isolated in Homs from the whole world," said Abdullah, who added that the city was going through a humanitarian crisis.

"There are neighbourhoods that we know nothing about. I myself do not know if my parents are okay. I have had no news from them for 14 days," he said.

Footage of the assault showed a tank firing on Homs, according to a video posted by activists on video-sharing website YouTube.

Nine bodies of unidentified people were found on Friday morning in Homs, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also reported the heaviest shelling in the city for two weeks.

Elsewhere in the country, two people died on Friday in eastern Deir Ezzor province, one a young man gunned down by security forces manning a checkpoint and the other a soldier, the Britain-based monitors said in a statement.

The violence comes after the UN General Assembly on Thursday demanded an immediate halt to Syria's brutal crackdown on dissent, which human rights groups say has claimed more than 6,000 lives over the past 11 months.

Forces of President Bashar al-Assad launched their Homs assault early on February 4.

Later that day, Russia and China vetoed a second UN Security Council resolution on Syria, which has vowed to maintain its campaign to crush dissent regardless of Arab and Western peace initiatives.