Syrian forces 'preparing to storm Homs'

Syrian troops have heavily shelled a rebel-held neighbourhood in the flashpoint central city of Homs as the military appeared to be readying to storm the area, activists said.

UN observers have also entered an area where a massacre was reported this week, an activist said. The monitors were stopped and fired on yesterday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees had no immediate word on casualties from the shelling of the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood in Homs.

Amateur videos posted online showed a small white plane, apparently a drone, flying over Homs.

"Khaldiyeh is being subjected to five to 10 shells a minute in the worst shelling since the revolution began," the Observatory said in a statement today.

"It seems they are trying to enter it today."

Homs has been one of the hardest hit regions in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began in March last year.

The UN said several weeks ago that more than 9,000 people have been killed since the crisis began while activists put the number of dead at about 13,000.

Amateur videos showed missiles exploding into balls of flames in the crowded concrete jumble of homes. The videos suggested the attack began at dawn, as birds chirped, roosters crowed and the sun cast a yellow glow.

In one video, the missiles came in rapid succession, four exploding in less than a minute.

Today's violence came two days after reports of a mass killing in the nearby province of Hama, where about 80 people, including women and children, were shot or stabbed.

Leith Al-Hamwy, an activist and resident of Mazraat al-Qubair said a group of observers entered the area, first visiting a cemetery where some of the dead were buried, continuing to the site of the mass killing.

In Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Hicham Hassan told reporters today that the humanitarian situation in Syria was worsening.

"Currently the situation is extremely tense, not only in Houla, not only in Hama, but in many, many places around the country," he said, referring to the string of villages known as Houla, where more than 100 people were massacred last month. The opposition and the regime blamed each other for that.

Hassan cited the countryside around the northern city of Idlib, suburbs of the capital Damascus, the eastern province of Deir el-Zour and the coastal region of Latakia as those targeted in the latest attacks

In Brussels, Kristalina Georgieva, European commissioner for humanitarian aid, talked about the Syrian crisis and EU aid saying, "we're talking one million vulnerable people who need humanitarian assistance".

"Between 200,000 and 400,000 are internally displaced … and we have 95,000 refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan primarily," she said, adding that there are more than 600,000 Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Syria.

Also today, activists reported anti-government protests in different areas, including the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, the southern region of Daraa and the suburbs of the capital, Damascus.

Syria's state-run media said armed "terrorist groups" attacked military units charged with protecting al-Omar oil field of al-Furat Oil Company in the oil-rich city of Deir Ezzor province. The official news agency SANA said several gunmen were killed in today's attack.

SANA also said a car bomb in the Damascus suburb of Qudsaya killed three policemen, while another explosion in the northern city of Idlib killed two soldiers and three civilians.

It was still not clear if observers have entered Mazraat al-Qubair, where activists said dozens of people, including women and children, were killed on Wednesday.

Activists said the Sunni village is surrounded by Alawite villages. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam and Assad is a member of the sect, while the opposition is dominated by Sunnis.

A government statement yesterday on the state-run news agency SANA said "an armed terrorist group committed an appalling crime" in Mazraat al-Qubair, killing nine women and children.

It said residents appealed for protection from Hama authorities, who sent security forces who went to the farm, stormed a hideout of the group and clashed with its fighters.