International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said on Thursday that a deal between trapped fighters and civilians in Homs city and the Syrian authorities had broken down, as government forces appeared close to retaking the besieged opposition area.
Homs, a religiously-mixed city, was the scene of early protests against
President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 and has become a symbol of the destructive nature of Syria's civil war, with many of its neighborhoods leveled by army shells.
Hundreds of people remain trapped in the old part of the city, surrounded by government forces. A deal agreed at peace talks in Geneva this year allowed some civilians to leave but further negotiations broke down following heavy fighting this week.
"It is alarming that Homs, whose people have suffered so much throughout these past three years is again the theater of death and destruction." In recent months, government forces have recaptured several rebel-held areas and border towns, closing off rebel supply routes from Lebanon and securing the main highway leading north from Damascus towards central
Syria, Homs and the Mediterranean.
The opposition National Coalition, a political body in exile, warned of a massacre if Assad's forces were to push through into the small pocket of rebel-held Homs.
Similarly, Syrian opposition factions launched an offensive against the Hanano barracks located in Aleppo where violent clashes are ongoing.
Opposition fighters blew up tunnels leading to the barracks, activists said.
On Wednesday, violent clashes were reported in Maysaloun and al-Sayed Ali regions and other areas close to the Hanano barracks as Syrian air force launched attacks on the Ramousa neighborhood.
Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center and its one-time commercial hub, has been a key front in the civil war.
On another note, opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of a new
poison gas attack in the Syrian capital on Wednesday, posting footage of four men being treated by medics.
They said the chemical attack, the fourth the opposition has reported this month, was in the Harasta neighborhood. The footage or the allegation could not be verified due to restrictions on reporting in Syria. More than 150,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which began as peaceful protests against Assad's rule, a third of them civilians, according to the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Millions have fled the country.
LBCI/REUTERS
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