Red Cross working to evacuate reporters from Homs

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not had any reply from Syrian authorities on its request for a truce to allow in aid supplies and evacuate the wounded, an ICRC spokesman told Reuters on Friday.
   
"The ICRC still has not had feedback on its initiative from Syrian authorities. We are more and more concerned over humanitarian needs that are increasing by the hour," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said in response to a query.
   
"It is crucial that our initiative is met with a positive and concrete reaction urgently," he said.

Syrian government artillery fire killed five people in Homs city's Baba Amro district on Friday, opposition activists said, in the third week of bombardments on opposition-held neighborhoods.
   
"Baba Amro is being hit with 122mm artillery directed at it from surrounding villages. A father and his 14-year old son were among those killed. They were trying to flee the shelling when shrapnel hit them in the street," Mohammad al-Homsi told Reuters.

It was also reported that French ambassador to Syria Eric Chevallier returned to Damascus.   

Meanwhile, Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the new United Nations-Arab League envoy on Syria, called on Friday on all parties to cooperate in ending violence and finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Annan was appointed by his successor U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby on Thursday as joint special envoy on the Syrian crisis.
   
"I am honoured to accept the role of Joint Special Envoy on the Syrian crisis, and am humbled by the trust and confidence that has been placed in me," Annan said in a statement issued by the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva.
   
"I look forward to having the full cooperation of all relevant parties and stakeholders in support of this united and determined effort by the United Nations and the Arab League to help bring an end to the violence and human rights abuses, and promote a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis," he said.

On the other hand, activists said Syrian security forces lined up and shot dead at least 18 people in a village in central Syria on Friday, including seven members of the same family.

They said the victims were from farming families: men, women and children including a ten-month-old baby and a 7-year-old, from Halfiya in Hama province. Security forces lined them up and shot them, activists said.

"Twelve of the people killed were shot in the head," an activist in Hama told Reuters.

The motive for the killings was not immediately clear.

The governor of the Syrian city of Homs and the Red Cross are working to evacuate wounded foreign journalists stranded there by Syrian government attacks on opposition rebels, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Friday.

"I have asked the Syrian authorities for our ambassador to go there. This authorization was not accepted, but the governor of Homs is working with the Red Cross to make this (evacuation) happen as quickly as possible," Juppe told a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group in Tunis.


Reuters/LBCI