Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad killed 13 people in attacks in the city of Homs Tuesday, residents said, an escalation of a crackdown against a focal point for pro-democracy protests. Among those killed were three mourners at a funeral for 10 people who were killed by security forces on Monday, the Local Coordinations Committee, an activists group, said. “We could not bury the martyrs at the city's main cemetery so we opted for a smaller cemetery near the mosque, when the militiamen began firing at us from their cars,” one mourner, who gave his name as Abdallah, told Reuters by telephone. He said the bodies had been taken to Khaled Ibn al-Walid mosque in the eastern Khalidiya district of the city. “Khalidiya is totally besieged by the military. We are cut off from the rest of Homs as if we are a separate country.” Homs has been a major centre of protests against Assad's rule and tension has run high between the majority Sunni inhabitants and members of the Alawite minority, the same sect as Assad. Khalidiya is inhabited by members of Sunni tribes from rural Homs while the nearby Nozha neighbourhood is home to most of the country's security forces and militiamen, from the Alawite sect. The six deaths reported in Homs' Khalidiya and Bab Amr neighbourhoods Tuesday brought the total death count since the weekend to at least 30, activists and residents said. Another resident said: “There are troops and armoured vehicles in every neighbourhood. The irregular forces with them are death squads. They have been firing indiscriminately since dawn with rifles and machineguns. No one can leave their homes.” Troops and tanks first entered Homs, 165 km north of Damascus, two months ago and occupied the main square after large protests demanding political freedoms. The Syrian National Human Rights Organisation said seven people were killed over the weekend in attacks by security forces. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bodies of 30 people were found in Homs over the weekend, and that some were mutilated. “After failing to ignite a sectarian civil war, the regime is expanding military operations to subdue the mass protests in Homs,” said an Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. Syrian authorities blame “armed terrorist groups” with Islamist links for the violence and say at least 500 policemen and soldiers have been killed since March. Human rights organisations say troops, security forces and militiamen killed at least 1,400 civilians in Syria, adding that more than 12,000 Syrians and security personnel who refused to fire at civilians had been shot dead.
