THE shells started raining down around 8pm on Friday night.
For the next five hours until early Saturday morning, the citizens of the Syrian city of Homs cowered in their homes as the artillery and mortar rounds fell indiscriminately on the neighbourhood of Khaldiya and four other districts. While many of the reports emerging from the city are difficult to verify given communication problems and restrictions on independent media by the Syrian authorities, a picture is slowly emerging of the scale of yesterday's Syrian army assault on Homs and its death toll on the civilian population.
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