Syrian forces fired heavy machines guns and launched at least one airstrike Monday on a neighborhood in the central city of Homs that rebels claimed to have seized a day earlier.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting raged in and around the Baba Amr district, sending civilians in nearby neighborhoods fleeing the area.

Baba Amr, a poor neighborhood on the southwest side of Syria‘s third largest city, was a center of opposition to President Bashar Assad early in the uprising that began two years ago.

Last year, government forces besieged Baba Amr for a month before rebel forces withdrew and the government seized control on March 1. Hundreds of people were killed in the violence, including two foreign journalists.

It was unclear how much of the neighborhood rebels had seized or continued to hold on Monday.

An activist in Homs reached via Skype on Monday said rebel fighters made a surprise entry into Baba Amr the previous morning and quickly took over seven government checkpoints in and near the neighborhood, seizing a good part of the area.

The government struck back on Monday, carrying out an airstrike, shelling the area and sending reinforcements, he said.

Another activist from Baba Amr who is now in Lebanon said rebels had taken the whole neighborhood and were focused on holding it despite the government‘s harsh counter attack.

He said it was very important to the regime militarily and as a symbol, so rebels are excited that this symbol of the revolution has been retaken. Both activists spoke on condition of anonymity out of concerns for their safety.

The Syrian government did not comment on the fighting on Monday. It does not respond to requests for comment on military matters and blames the war on a foreign-backed conspiracy, calling the rebels “terrorists” bent on destroying the country.

In Brussels, European Union foreign ministers met to discuss ways to end the violence in Syria. They were expected to discuss ending the EU‘s blanket arms embargo against the country to make it easier for sympathetic nations to send arms to the rebels.

Many EU diplomats, however, says more weapons will only exacerbate the situation.

Syrian Gen. Salim Idris, a defector who now heads the rebels’ High Military Council, traveled to Brussels last week to plead for arms from the international community.

Also Monday, the U.N. Human Rights Council released a report that said neither government forces nor rebels were doing enough to protect civilians.

The Geneva-based council said some 2.5 million of Syria‘s 22 million people have been internally displaced and another million have fled the country as refugees.

“Failure to resolve this increasingly violent conflict will condemn Syria, the region and the millions of civilians caught in the crossfire to an unimaginably bleak future,” it said.

The report accused government forces of targeting civilians in bakery lines and funeral processions, while criticizing rebels for fighting in civilian areas and using buildings such as mosques for bases.

The report covers the period from Jan. 15 to March 3, 2013. It noted that insufficient access to the country greatly …read more
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