Red Cross urges daily ceasefire as Assad pounds lairs of rebels

Activists said the intense shelling of Baba Amr in Homs lasted a few hours but did not seem to be the start of a widely expected military offensive aimed at retaking rebel-held neighbourhoods in the central region. At least two of the 16 people killed were children, activists said, warning that Homs is already facing a humanitarian catastrophe.

The attacks compounded fears of a new round of bloody urban combat in a country careening toward all-out civil war.

“The current situation requires an immediate decision to implement a humanitarian pause in the fighting,” said Jakob Kellenberger, president of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross.

“In Homs and in other affected areas, entire families have been stuck for days in their homes, unable to step outside to get bread, other food or water, or to obtain medical care,

The Red Cross said it has been negotiating with Syrian authorities and members of the opposition to agree a temporary ceasefire so emergency aid can reach beleaguered parts of the country.

“It should last at least two hours every day, so that ICRC staff and Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers have enough time to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded and the sick,” said Mr Kellenberger.

Red Cross efforts to broker a temporary reprieve for affected areas came as Russia said the United Nations should send a special envoy to Syria to help co-ordinate security issues and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter that it is proposing that the UN Security Council ask the UN Secretary General to send the envoy.

Russia and China vetoed two Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning the crackdown. Moscow also has promised to block any future UN resolution, fearing a repeat of the mandate for international action in Libya, and has ruled out attending the planned “Friends of Syria” meeting, because its organisers had failed to invite Syrian government representatives.

“It looks like an attempt to forge some kind of international coalition like it was with the setting-up of a Contact Group for Libya,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Kukasevich.

The UN estimates at least 5,400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the 11-month uprising against Syria’s President Bashar Assad. But that figure was given in January and hundreds more have been reported killed since. The military sent columns of tanks and other reinforcements toward Homs on Monday, activists said.

A flood of military reinforcements has been a prelude to previous offensives by the authoritarian regime, which has tried to use its overwhelming firepower to crush an opposition that has been bolstered by defecting soldiers and hardened by months of street battles.

Activists reported heavy shelling of the Baba Amr, Khaldiyeh and Karm el-Zeytoun districts in Homs. It lasted for more than two hours early in the morning, followed by intermittent attacks on Baba Amr. The district on Homs’ south-west edge has become the centre of the city’s opposition. Hundreds of army defectors are thought to be taking shelter there.

Residents and activists say a stepped up attacks on Baba Amr in recent days have left the district without enough food, medicine, electricity and water.