SYRIA'S military pursued a crackdown on rebels on several fronts yesterday, days after eliminating an opposition bastion in the central city of Homs following a 26-day siege, activists said.
Troops kept the Red Cross out of the wrecked Homs district of Baba Amr for a fourth day and foreign mediators sought to end year-long violence as more civilians fled to nearby Lebanon.
Braving army patrols and winter weather, hundreds of Syrians crossed into Lebanon in the past 24 hours to escape the heaviest shelling of their border towns since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last March.
In the town of Arsal in Lebanon, residents said 100 to 150 families arrived from Syria on Sunday – one of the biggest refugee influxes so far. Families trekked through snow-capped hills to safety, but many others were caught, one refugee said.
Syria has so far brushed off international pressure to halt its violent response to the uprising.
The UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, will travel to Damascus on Saturday for what would be his first visit since he was appointed to the post last month.
The state news agency SANA said the Government welcomed his visit and had accepted one by UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, who was denied entry to Syria last week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article