Syria: troops attack city of Hama as explosion hits major oil pipeline

Tanks deployed near the citadel of Hama were shelling the neighbourhoods of Faraya, Olailat, Bashoura and al-Hamidiya, and troops were advancing from the airport, opposition sources said.

An activist called Amer, speaking briefly by satellite phone, said that "landlines and mobile phone networks have been cut in the whole of Hama," a Sunni city notorious for the massacre of some 10,000 people when the present president's father Hafez sent in troops to crush an uprising there in 1982.

Activists said no casualty reports were available from Hama, Syria's fourth largest city, because of communications problems.

Assad's determination to crush the revolt, regardless of widespread condemnation of his use of force against civilians, prompted Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia to prepare a new resolution at the United Nations in support of a peace plan forged at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday.

A resolution passed at the meeting urged Arabs to "provide all kinds of political and material support" to the opposition.

This included arms transfers, Arab League diplomats told Reuters.

"We will back the opposition financially and diplomatically in the beginning but if the killing by the regime continues, civilians must be helped to protect themselves. The resolution gives Arab states all options to protect the Syrian people," an Arab ambassador said in Cairo.

The head of Egypt's influential seat of Sunni Islamic learning, al-Azhar, called on Tuesday for bold Arab action against the Syrian government, raising regional pressure on Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, that has dominated Syria for five decades.

The threat of military support was meant to add pressure on the Syrian leader and his Russian and Chinese allies but it also risks leading to a Libya-style conflict or sectarian civil war.

Russia and China on Feb 4 vetoed a Western-Arab UN Security Council resolution that backed an Arab League call for Assad to step aside as part of efforts to end the bloodshed.

Source: Reuters

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