Syria army blasts rebels as Assad targets 'terror'

Syrian forces pounded rebel-held towns on Tuesday and blasted a bridge used by refugees fleeing to Lebanon, monitors said, as President Bashar al-Assad vowed to press ahead with his campaign to crush "terrorism."

"The Syrian people ... have again proven their capacity to defend the nation and to build a new Syria through their determination to pursue reforms along with the fight against foreign-backed terrorism," he said, quoted by state news agency SANA.

In the face of widespread international condemnation of Syria's crackdown on dissent that the United Nations says has cost more than 7,500 lives, Assad insists his security forces are locked in combat with foreign-backed "terrorist gangs."

At least 12 people were killed on Tuesday, including a young girl, as Syrian forces launched a major assault on Herak, a town in the southern province of Daraa, a monitoring group said.

"Large military forces, including tanks and armoured troop carriers, launched an assault on Herak," the Britain-based monitoring group added, citing residents.

After fleeing the battered Baba Amr district in the flashpoint central city of Homs, the rebels regrouped in nearby Rastan, which has been bombed intermittently since February 5 and which the Observatory and activists said came under artillery fire on Sunday and Monday.

Qusayr, another town in Homs province that has fallen mainly under rebel control, was also targeted by heavy bombardment, according to Anas Abu Ali, an official with the FSA.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP in Beirut that Syrian forces bombed a bridge used to evacuate the wounded and refugees to Lebanon from Homs province.

The violence comes amid a flurry of diplomatic initiatives launched separately by the Arab League, the United Nations, Russia and China -- all aimed at ending the year-long tumult in Syria.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, was negotiating with Syria authorities for a fourth day to be allowed to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded from Baba Amr.

Rebel fighters retreated from Baba Amr last Thursday in the face of a ground assault by Syrian forces after almost a month of shelling, with fleeing residents giving terrifying accounts of atrocities committed by government troops.

The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society have since sought in vain permission to enter the Homs district with a seven-truck aid convoy.

With the convoy stalled, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged the international community on Tuesday to put pressure on Damascus to allow the delivery of relief supplies to civilians.

In New York, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said she had been granted permission by Damascus to go to Syria from Wednesday to Friday.

The aim of the visit, she said, would be "to urge all parties to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so that they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies."

The violence in Homs province has sent more than 1,500 Syrian refugees, mainly women and children, fleeing across the border into Lebanon in the past few days, UN and Lebanese officials said.

With diplomatic efforts so far stymied, US Senator John McCain, an influential Republican, called on Monday for American air strikes on Syrian forces to protect population centres and create safe havens.

At the request of the Syrian opposition, he said "the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centres in Syria, especially in the north, through air strikes on Assad's forces."

On Wednesday, former UN chief Kofi Annan is to launch a mission aimed at Assad to silence the guns blamed for thousands of deaths since anti-regime protests broke out last March.

He is to hold talks with Arab leaders in Cairo before heading to the Syrian capital on Saturday as joint special envoy for the United Nations and the 22-member Arab League.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, said he was to meet his Arab counterparts on Saturday in Cairo, where the League has its headquarters, to discuss Moscow's ally Syria.

But the Russian foreign ministry warned that it was wishful thinking to expect Moscow to change its stance on the Syria crisis following Vladimir Putin's presidential election victory.

Russia and its diplomatic ally China have infuriated the West by twice vetoing UN Security Council resolutions condemning the Assad regime for the bloodshed in Syria.

China's former ambassador to Damascus, Li Huaxin, is due in Syria on Wednesday for meetings with the government and other parties.

France, meanwhile, was to close its Damascus embassy on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said, after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the move to protest the Syrian regime's bloody crackdown.

Spain also announced on Tuesday that it was suspending its diplomatic activities in Syria, after recalling its ambassador from Damascus last month due to the escalating violence.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-presses-assaults-ahead-annan-peace-bid-102036074.html

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