EU to slap new sanctions on Syria as death toll rises

Snipers and security forces killed five civilians Wednesday in Syria's flashpoint province of Homs, activists said as the EU announced plans to slap new sanctions on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The latest bloodletting came as US President Barack Obama called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Syria in a speech at the General Assembly in New York.

And in Geneva the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the death toll from the regime's bloody crackdown on protesters since mid-March rose to more than 2,700 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, quoting residents, said snipers shot dead a man in the Baba Amro neighbourhood of the city of Homs and killed another in the town of Rastan, in the central province.

A man and a woman were also shot dead by security forces in the city of Homs, where a man who died on Wednesday of his injuries, while a 24-year-old hit by a bullet bled to death in Talbisseh in the same province, it said.

Meanwhile, "security forces arrested three wounded people in a Homs hospital and took them to an unknown destination," the Observatory said.