Syrian forces killed at least three people during a raid on the Bayada district in the city of Homs today, an activists' organisation said, in the second day of attacks on residential neighbourhoods following night protests.
The Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union said 15 people were also injured, with security forces focusing on Tash street in the city, 165 km north of the capital Damascus.
An armoured Syrian force killed at least 15 civilians in a similar assault on the Bab Amro district of Homs yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Syrian authorities have banned independent media from Homs, the country's third largest city, and the rest of Syria, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asked why the United States has not yet called for Syria's president Bashar al-Assad to step down, said Washington wants other nations to add their voices, according to an interview by the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley released today.
The United States has been ‘very clear’ in its statements about Assad's loss of legitimacy, Clinton said, according to excerpts of the CBS interview.
‘But it's important that it's not just the American voice. And we want to make sure those voices are coming from around the world,’ she said.
Mrs Clinton also said what was necessary to pressure Assad was to sanction Syria's oil and gas industry.
‘And we want to see Europe take more steps in that direction. And we want to see China take steps with us,’ she said. ‘There's no doubt in anyone's mind where the United States stands.’
The US also imposed new financial sanctions today, edging closer to issuing an explicit call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
With international pressure intensifying on Mr Assad over his brutal crackdown on protests, a US official said the Obama administration is expected to lay out a tougher line this week.
The US Treasury Department expanded sanctions against Assad's government and inner circle, adding that Syria's largest commercial bank and mobile phone operator to a blacklist of companies hit with asset freezes and barred from doing business in the US.
The White House reasserted US president Barack Obama's view that Assad has ‘lost legitimacy’ and Syria ‘will be a better place’ without him, but again stopped short of specifically calling on him to leave power.
However there were reports that the US was preparing to explicitly call for Assad to step down, though the timing of such a call remained unclear.
UN Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco briefed the 15-member Security Council behind closed doors about events in Syria in the week since the council called for an ‘immediate’ halt to the violence.
Mr Taranco was quoted as saying there had been no letup in the deaths of protesters - with at least 87 people killed across the country on Tuesday alone - while UN officials had met Syrian diplomats to try to get accurate information.
Syrian security forces cut power and communications to protest towns targeted by operations, he added.
Mr Taranco spoke of reports of summary executions and soldiers defecting because of a shoot-to-kill policy, diplomats said.
In a bid to keep Syria high on the Security Council agenda, Western nations pressed for a new report next week with briefings from the top UN human rights and humanitarian officials.
Western envoys said the Security Council would have to consider ‘further action’ if events did not improve by the next report.
Mr Taranco's briefing had been ‘depressing and chilling,’ Britain's Deputy UN Ambassador Philip Parham told reporters.
Assad was said to have admitted his security forces had made ‘some mistakes’ in battling protests, as he met with several UN Security Council members in Damascus.
Abdel Karim Rihawi, the head of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights, was arrested this afternoon, activists told AFP.
He was arrested at 3pm (1pm Irish time) in the Havana cafe in Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Nicosia, addding they had not heard from him since the arrest.
Several key opposition figures have been in and out of jail since protests erupted in mid-March. But this marks the first arrest for 43-year-old Rihawi.
He has been a critical source of information for international media in a country where the movement of reporters is restricted by authorities and where a harsh crackdown on protests has left over 2,000 dead, rights group say.
