Associated Press BEIRUT — Medics stitch wounds with thread used for clothing. Hungry residents risk Syrian government sniper fire or shelling to hunt for dwindling supplies of bread and canned food on the streets of the besieged city of Homs.
Associated Press
BEIRUT — Medics stitch wounds with thread used for clothing. Hungry residents risk Syrian government sniper fire or shelling to hunt for dwindling supplies of bread and canned food on the streets of the besieged city of Homs.
The opposition stronghold was being destroyed “inch by inch,” by government forces, with collapsed walls and scorched buildings, according to accounts Thursday, while Western and Arab leaders hoped to silence the guns long enough to rush in relief aid.
The pressure for “humanitarian corridors” into the central Syrian city of Homs and other places caught in President Bashar Assad’s crushing attacks appeared to be part of shifts toward more aggressive steps against his regime after nearly a year of bloodshed and thousands of deaths in an anti-government uprising.
In back-to-back announcements, U.N.-appointed investigators in Geneva said a list for possible crimes against humanity prosecution reaches as high as Assad, and international envoys in London — including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — made final touches to an expected demand for Assad to call a cease-fire within days to permit emergency shipments of food and medicine.
Washington and European allies remain publicly opposed to direct military intervention. But there have been growing signs that Western leaders could back efforts to open channels for supplies and weapons to the Syrian opposition, which includes breakaway soldiers from Assad’s military.
In a sign of the international divide, however, key Assad ally Russia said Moscow and Beijing remain opposed to any foreign interference in Syria. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev spoke by telephone with the president of the United Arab Emirates and emphasized that “foreign interference, attempts to assess the legitimacy of the leadership of a state from the outside, run counter to the norms of international law and are fraught with the threat of regional and global destabilization,” the Kremlin said.
“It is a deeply frustrating situation,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC radio ahead of the London talks. He said that the Assad regime “has continued to act seemingly with impunity.”
At least 16 people were killed across Syria, activists said. One group, the Local Coordination Committees, put the number at 40 with attacks ranging from mountain villages to areas near the capital of Damascus. The reason for the differing tolls was not immediately clear.
The most intense offensive, however, remained on beleaguered Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. Its defiance — amid hundreds of civilian casualties in the past weeks — has eroded Assad’s narrative that the uprising is the work of “armed thugs” and foreign plots.
Images posted online and accounts from activists and correspondents smuggled in — including two Western journalists killed Wednesday — also have stirred comparisons to sieges such as Misrata during last year’s Arab Spring revolt in Libya.
The epicenter — the Baba Amr neighborhood on the city’s southeast corner — is a collection of slum-like apartment blocks with peeling paint and neglected older homes. They draw in workers and fortune-seekers from across Syria to a place known as the “mother of the poor” because of its cheaper cost of living, compared with Damascus or Aleppo.
“They are blanketing Baba Amr with shells and snipers. They are destroying it street by street, inch by inch,” local activist Omar Shaker told The Associated Press.
Residents say 70 percent of the area is now inhabitable in harsh winter weather with temperatures dipping close to freezing some nights. Walls have collapsed; windows are shattered from shells that fall as much as two-a-minute during some of the heaviest barrages.
Another Homs activist, Mulham al-Jundi, called the conditions “catastrophic” in parts of the city, spreading over a valley in central Syria just 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the Lebanese border. Long lines form at even rumors of bread, cans of food or fuel for heaters, he said.
“There simply isn’t enough to go around anymore,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syria’s state-run media pushed back with its own version: Running photos on the official news agency SANA that claim to show markets full of food in Homs. It called the claims about food shortages “fabricating lies.”
Activists give a very different view. Bodies are buried wherever people can find space, they say. The wounded are too scared to try to reach government-controlled hospitals in other parts of the city. Instead, they stagger into makeshift clinics in kitchens and offices, al-Jundi said.
He said clothing Ky.; Washington, Pa.; Cardiss Collins (Chicago), Ill.; Gaylord, Mich.; Staten Island, New York; Mankato, Minn.; Champaign, Ill.; Atlanta, Ga.; Corpus Christi, Texas; Fort Worth, Texas; Mid-Florida, Fla.; and Butte, Mont.
“The steps we are taking now will put the Postal Service on a strong financial footing for decades to come,” the agency said in a statement.
The estimated $3 billion in reductions are part of a wide-ranging effort by the Postal Service to quickly trim costs, seeing no immediate help from Congress. It is seeking to close or consolidate more than half of its nearly 500 mail processing centers.
Because the consolidations typically would lengthen the distance mail travels from post office to processing center, the agency also would lower delivery standards for first-class mail that, for the first time in 40 years, will eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.
Last week, the Postal Service warned it will lose as much as $18.2 billion a year by 2015 unless Congress grants it new leeway to eliminate Saturday delivery and raise the price of a postage stamp by as much as 5 cents.
It is asking Congress for permission to make service cuts and reduce annual payments of about $5.5 billion to prefund retiree health benefits. At the request of Congress, the cash-strapped agency agreed to wait until mid-May to begin closures so lawmakers would have time to stabilize its finances first.
But in recent weeks, the Senate and House have stalled as lawmakers differ widely on costs, the level of financial oversight and the prospect of widespread postal closures.
The Postal Service, an independent agency of government, is subject to congressional control on major aspects of its operations. Earlier this month, the Postal Service said its quarterly loss ballooned to $3.3 billion amid declining mail volume and said it could run out of money by October.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is pushing for legislative changes that would stop or delay mass closings of mail processing centers, described the proposed closings as counterproductive. He and 26 other senators recently signed a letter to congressional sponsors of postal legislation seeking to prevent cuts to first-class mail delivery.
“At a time when the Postal Service is competing against the instantaneous delivery of information from email and the Internet, slowing down mail delivery service will result in less business and less revenue, and will bring about a death spiral for this institution,” Sanders said.
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Online:
Mail processing centers proposed for consolidation or closure: http://bit.ly/z7zZ2L
