Middle East News

Syrian city of Homs faces food, medical blockade

By Mayte Carrasco Feb 9, 2012, 4:01 GMT

An undated handout photograph made available by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria on 08 February 2012, shows damages inside a home reportedly following shelling at the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, Syria. EPA/LOCAL COORDINATION COMMITTEES LCC/PHOTO NOT CONFIRMED

Homs, Syria - In a basement in a district of Homs, Syria, Maryam huddles with her two children and around 20 others. 'We have nothing left for the little ones,' she says between sobs.

Supplies are growing short for the more than 28,000 people in the city's Baba Amr district trying to survive the assault by government forces.

Since Saturday, around 500 shells a day have rained down on the neighbourhood, killing men, women and children in their homes.

Dozens of snipers shoot from the rooftops at everything that moves. The streets are deserted, the only vehicles moving are carrying the wounded or dead.

The 40 army checkpoints surrounding the city have prevented supplies from entering the city for the past 10 days. Food, medicine and heating fuel are growing scarce, as daytime temperatures approach freezing in the Syrian winter.

Maryam and her children are among many families who have sought refuge in the city's basements. They share their hideout with around 20 other women and children as young as 2 months old.

'We are very scared because if they come into the city they will kill us,' she says. 'They have no pity, not even for children.'

There are only three doctors for the whole of Homs, and one was wounded by a shell that hit a makeshift hospital.

'The two that remain are very tired, exhausted, because they have been working for 72 hours non-stop,' Maryam says.

In one of the hospitals, staff step around the growing number of bodies on the floor to reach the treatment room, where two nurses tend to a dozen injured, with inadequate medical supplies.

The city has been neglected in recent years, with almost no infrastructure investment from the state, widespread corruption and unemployment at 37 per cent even before the riots.

'The regime wants to put an end to the uprising as soon as possible, and it knows that Homs is the bastion,' says Khaled, one of the area's activists.

'But we will not surrender. In this neighbourhood alone they have killed more than 274 people and injured more than 2,000.'

The government has dispatched special forces to Homs, to lead the army in an imminent storming of the city, says Walid al Kader, a colonel with the rebel Free Syrian Army.

'They have tried before but we were able to stop the offensive,' he says.

This time, the regime seems determined to crush the turmoil in Homs, seen as the starting point for the unrest which has engulfed the country. Footage on Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera showed tanks moving around inside the city, although the precise location was not clear.