Gulf Arab states called on the
U.N. Security Council on Monday to meet urgently to prevent a massacre in Homs,
as pro-government forces in Syria try to wrest the city from rebels fighting to
topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad's army and allied fighters launched
an offensive against rebels in control of the central city on Saturday after
scoring victories against the opposition in other parts of the country.
Sunni Muslim Gulf states led by Saudi
Arabia and Qatar have backed the rebels with arms and money in a fight to
topple Assad, who is backed by Shi'ite power Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah
group.
"Considering the Syrian regime's
insistence on ethnic and sectarian cleansing, as recently happened near Homs,
and its use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, the continued siege
of Homs is inhumane and threatens a massacre," said a statement from the
Gulf Cooperation Council.
"The GCC calls on the Security Council
to convene on an urgent basis to lift the siege of the city of Homs,"
added the statement by the GCC, which comprises Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait,
Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
The countries said they were particularly
worried about the presence of Hezbollah on the government side, fighting
"under the banner" of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
GCC foreign ministers met EU foreign
representative Catherine Ashton on Sunday to discuss the Syrian conflict and
later called on the European Union to arm rebels the immediately.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been supplying
weapons including anti-aircraft systems, Gulf sources have said, but diplomats
in the region say the rebels increasingly need improved training and organizational
help from Western countries to avoid defeat.
On the field:
The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said opposition fighters are facing for the
third consecutive day regime forces who have been trying to break
through various neighborhoods in Homs.
Rami Abdulrahman, the head
of the Observatory, reported that heavy shelling is continuous on
various neighborhoods in Homs including the Khalidiyah neighborhood;
however, stressed that regime forces did not achieve any progress and
did not regain control of the strategic area.
Abdulrahman
stressed that Hezbollah is participating in the clashes on the
Khalidiyah front, taking the Zahraa neighborhood in Homs as its base.
On
another note, the state-run news agency reported a terrorist bombing in
the Saboura region in Reef Hama, adding that a number of citizens were
injured.
Positions:
The U.N. secretary-general said
the participation of Iran and Saudi Arabia in the proposed Syria peace talks in
Geneva remains a stumbling block that has not yet been resolved.
Ban Ki-moon said Monday that he
expects both Syrian government and the opposition groups to send delegations to
the talks, planned for this summer.
Ban said that some nations remain
divided whether to invite Iran and Saudi Arabia, who have been supporting the
warring sides in the civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people, and
displaced millions.
HRW report:
Syria's neighbors have closed or
tightened restrictions at several border crossings, leaving tens of thousands
of people stranded within Syria's dangerous frontier regions, Human Rights
Watch said on Monday.
It said Iraq, Jordan and Turkey had all
restricted the flow of people trying to flee a conflict which has killed
100,000 people and, according to the United Nations, has already driven 1.7
million more to take sanctuary outside Syria.
Only Lebanon, which has limited control
over its own borders and is now hosting over half a million refugees, had
remained open to refugees, the New York-based rights group said.
HRW said the Iraqi authorities in
Baghdad had severely limited the numbers of Syrians allowed to enter since
August 2012, and that new arrivals virtually ceased in late March.
Turkey is blocking thousands of Syrians at
the Bab al-Salam, Atma and other crossings, HRW said, and only sporadically
allowing small numbers from camps inside Syria to cross.
All of those border towns have been
periodically targeted by Syrian air strikes.
REUTERS/LBCI/AP
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