Child killed in Syrian forces crackdown

GUNFIRE and shelling rattled a city in central Syria yesterday and killed a 12-year-old boy, as president Bashar Assad’s regime expanded its military crackdown on a seven-week-old uprising.

Like several other trouble spots in the country, the government has answered protests in the city of Homs by sending in tanks and soldiers to seal it off and cutting phone service to leave it further isolated.

The exact circumstances of the boy’s death, however, are unknown.