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February 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Neither report could be independently verified. Al-Shabiha constitutes an irregular militia recruited largely from Mr Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which accounts for 10 per cent of Syria’s population. They display pictures of the president on their vehicles and are routinely deployed to terrorise the regime’s opponents among the Sunni majority.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said she was “appalled by the Syrian government’s wilful assault on Homs,” adding that Mr Assad’s regime was guilty of “what appear to be indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas in the city”.
Homs, a city of 1 million people divided between Alawites, Sunnis and Christians, has become an FSA stronghold and the epicentre of the recent fighting.
Yesterday’s bombardment began at about 6am, said an opposition activist who gave his name as Waleed, speaking on a satellite phone from outside Homs. “We can hear explosions everywhere. We can hear the explosions from 4 or 5 km away,” he said.
“We have no idea about the number of victims, but I saw six dead bodies today and there are many injured.” He added that three or four shells had exploded nearby in the previous few minutes.
“Everybody is expecting a big attack,” said Mr Waleed. “After the bombardment, they will send in troops. They bomb first, then they send the troops.”
Earlier, two men tried to take medical supplies to the district of Baba Amr, which has suffered most from the barrage and appears to have been cut off from the rest of the city. “We don’t know if they got in or not,” said Mr Waleed. “If you get in, you cannot get out.”
The fighting was so intense, he added, that the wounded were unable to reach the city’s hospitals. Many were being treated in makeshift facilities that are desperately short of medicine and supplies. “We just need the Red Crescent to come here,” said Mr Waleed.
Rooftop snipers were also keeping people confined to their homes and preventing help from reaching casualties. “The snipers are going mad here. You cannot go to the next street because on many blocks they have snipers,” he added. “People have been shot while carrying the injured. People have been shot while they are running for bread. People cannot move, so they are shouting to contact eachother.”
Footage released by other opposition activists showed columns of T-72 tanks, carried on transporter lorries, moving towards Homs along the main road from Damascus, providing evidence that the regime was continuing its military build-up around the city, the third-biggest in Syria. Across the country, a total of 62 people were killed yesterday, according to the Human Rights Observatory.
Homs is divided between largely Sunni areas, where FSA rebels have a strong presence and the fighting is fiercest, and Alawite and Christian quarters, where regime forces have gathered.
Yesterday, Syrian state television reported that “armed terrorist gangs” had detonated a car bomb in the Bayada area of the city, killing several people. They also accused armed men of attacking the oil refinery in Homs.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, defended his country’s decision to oppose any outside intervention in the conflict or any calls for Mr Assad to step down. “Of course we condemn violence from whichever side it comes, but we must not behave like a bull in a china shop. We need to allow people to decide their own fate independently,” he said on Russian television.
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