President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
to end the violent crackdown.
Wednesday's security operation came after 2,000 people had taken to the streets of the city a day earlier, activists said.
Most of the killings occurred in old neighbourhoods of Homs, situated on the main northern highway 165km from the capital Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based independent Syrian rights group, said.
"Military reinforcements including 20 truckloads of soldiers entered the city," it said, opening "intense gunfire in the market and governorate headquarters".
The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), which organises the anti-regime protests on the ground, said the corpse count continues to increase in Homs, where communications and internet services was cut in many neighbourhoods on Wednesday.
At least two people were killed in raids and attacks on Idlib province's Sarmeen, and one other in the northern city of Hama, the LCC said.
State-run news agency SANA reported that a "terrorist group" kidnapped two Baath party officials in the town of Rastan, near Homs, on Wednesday.
"That may be the reason behind the intense raids in Homs," Al Jizz's Omar al-Saleh reported from neighbouring Jordan. The Syrian government bans international journalists from entering the country.
Activists and residents said heavy machine-gun fire was heard in the Bab Dreib and Bostan Diwan neighbourhoods of Homs on Tuesday night after the protesters had set out for the area from Bab Tadmor.
Visit postponed
The security operations came just hours after Syria requested Nabil Elaraby, the Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
secretary-general, to delay his visit to Damascus, "due to circumstances beyond our control", SANA said late on Tuesday.
League officials said Elaraby will now visit Syria on Saturday.
Elaraby had been commissioned by the 22-member bloc to travel on Wednesday with a 13-point document outlining proposals to end the government's bloody crackdown on dissent and push Syria to launch reforms.
According to a copy of the document, he was to propose that Assad hold elections in three years, move towards a pluralistic government and immediately halt the crackdown on anti-government protesters.
The initiative, agreed at an Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo last month, calls for a "clear declaration of principles by Assad specifying commitment to reforms he made in past speeches".
The initiative angered Syria which said it contained "unacceptable and biased language".