Syria army launches assault in besieged Homs

16th, April 2014

DAMASCUS — Syrian army troops entered opposition-held neighbourhoods of the central city of Homs yesterday after laying siege to the districts for nearly two years.

The assault follows a UN operation earlier this year that saw some 1,400 people trapped inside the besieged neighbourhoods evacuated, though around 1,300 people, mostly fighters, remained behind.

It comes a day after the troops seized the town of Maalula in the Qalamun region and as media reported the country would soon move into election mode.

“The Syrian army and the National Defence Forces have achieved key successes in the Old City of Homs,” Syrian state television said.

It added that troops were advancing in several besieged neighbourhoods in the area, and had “killed a number of insurgents”.

Activists on the ground and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO both confirmed the operation.

“They have entered into one (besieged) area, Wadi al Sayeh, which lies between Juret al Shiyah and the Old City,” said Abu Bilal, an activist trapped inside the blockade, who spoke via the Internet.

“This is the first time the troops has entered the besieged areas since it took Khaldiyeh” district in summer 2013, he added.

Activist Abu Fehmi, also trapped in the siege, said the army was “bombing very, very intensely”.

Britain-based Observatory Director Rami Abdel Rahman said government forces began the advance a day earlier. “The military operation began yesterday after NDF forces were deployed to strengthen the troops’ presence,” he said.

Homs is Syria’s third city and activists have long referred to it as the “capital of the revolution” for the large protests held there when the uprising began in March 2011.

Most of the central city is now under government control and opposition-held pockets have been under a government siege for nearly two years, leading to dwindling food and medical supplies.

In February, the UN and Syria’s Red Crescent evacuated some 1,500 people from the besieged areas and delivered some aid.

Evacuations from the battered districts began in February, during a UN-supervised humanitarian operation that saw some 1,400 people leave the blockaded opposition areas.

Activists said they fear that 400 men, including opposition fighters and draft evaders from besieged Homs who had recently surrendered to the authorities, may be held indefinitely.

Some 100 men detained at the time of the UN humanitarian operation remain in the hands of the authorities, activists say.

Two weeks ago, another 300 men also left the siege, including a civilian activist who identified himself as Omar and managed to speak from a school turned detention centre where he is being held.

“There was a promise that the army defectors would be released if they handed in their weapons, and they did. There was talk that we draft evaders would be released too, but till now, there is nothing,” said Omar.

Today, some 1,300 people, most of them fighters, remain inside the besieged areas of Homs.

As the fighting continues, the Al Watan daily said that the speaker of parliament would announce the date of the country’s presidential elections next week.

They are expected to be held in June, before the end of Assad’s seven-year term on July 17.

Assad is expected to run and win. Electoral rules require candidates to have spent the last 10 years in Syria, effectively preventing the opposition-in-exile from competing against him.

It remains unclear how Syria’s government can stage elections with much of its territory under opposition control and nearly half of its population displaced inside or outside the country by the fighting.

Elsewhere, state media and the Observatory said a child was killed and at least 40 people injured in mortar fire on the capital Damascus.