Associated Press

BEIRUT: Syrian activists accused regime forces of carrying out execution-style killings and burning homes Friday as part of a scorched-earth campaign in a key neighborhood in Homs.
 
The Red Cross has also accused the regime of blocking the group’s access to the area following a bloody, month-long siege to dislodge rebel forces.
 
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Syrian authorities handed over the bodies of two journalists killed on Feb. 22, American Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik. Their bodies were transported to Damascus late Friday.
 
Having initially received permission from the government Thursday to enter Baba Amr, a convoy with seven truckloads of aid was poised to do so Friday, but the ICRC said it had been denied entry to the neighborhood at the last minute.
 
Humanitarian conditions were believed to be catastrophic – extended power and water shortages during frigid, snowy winter.
 
“It is unacceptable that people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help,” said ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger. “We are staying in Homs tonight in the hope of entering Baba Amr in the very near future.”
 
The Syrian regime has said it was fighting “armed gangs” in Baba Amr, and vowed to “cleanse” the neighborhood over the past month. Activists’ videos have shown scenes of devastation, with flattened and burned-out buildings. Residents also were seen gathering snow to use for drinking water and piles of rubble.
 
Human Rights Watch Friday released satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts of the destruction in Baba Amr. They said the image showed damage caused by the use of surface-delivered explosive weapons – at least 640 damaged buildings – and said they had documented the use of Russian-made 240 mm mortar designed to “demolish fortifications and fieldworks.”
 
Syria has faced mounting international criticism over its crackdown on the uprising, which started with peaceful protests but has become increasingly militarized. The U.N. has estimated that more than 7,500 people have been killed since the uprising began nearly a year ago.
 
France said Friday it is closing its embassy in Syria, a day after two French journalists escaped to Lebanon after being trapped for days in the central city of Homs. The United States and Britain have already closed their embassies in the country.
 
Syrian forces retook control of Baba Amr Thursday, and there were growing fears of revenge attacks after the rebels withdrew.
 
Bassel Fouad, a Syrian activist who fled to Lebanon from Baba Amr Wednesday, said a colleague there told him Friday that Syrian troops and pro-regime gunmen known as Shabbiha were conducting house-to-house raids.
 
“The situation is worse than terrible inside Baba Amr,” Fouad said. “Shabbiha are entering homes and setting them on fire.”
 
His colleague said the gunmen lined 10 men up early Friday and shot them dead in front of a government cooperative that sells subsidized food. He said Syrian forces were detaining anyone over the age of 14 in the three-story building. “They begin at the start of a street and enter and search house after house,” he said. “Then they start with another street.”
 
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said it had received reports of 10 people slain in front of a Co-op and called on the Red Cross team heading to Homs to investigate claims by residents that the building is being used as a prison. Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, said 14 were killed. The claims could not be independently verified. Information from inside Baba Amr has been difficult to obtain in recent days. Activists elsewhere in the city said those in Baba Amr stopped using satellite connections for fear the government could use them to target strikes.
 
Activists said 700 were killed during the nearly month-long siege, and many lived for days with little food and no electricity or running water.
 
The U.N. said it was alarmed by the reports of execution-style killings after the Syrian army seized Baba Amr from rebel forces in a major blow to the opposition.
 
In Geneva, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the agency had received unconfirmed reports of “a particularly grisly set of summary executions” involving 17 people in Baba Amr after regime forces entered.
 
The Red Cross, meanwhile, sent a convoy of aid trucks to Homs along a snow-covered route from the capital Damascus early Friday. Khalid Arqsouseh, a spokesman for the Syrian Red Crescent in Homs, said the seven 15-ton trucks were carrying food, milk powder, medical supplies and blankets.
 
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the events in Syria a “scandal,” adding that the European Council “condemned in the harshest terms what is happening in Syria.”
 
French Ambassador Eric Chevallier had only recently returned to Damascus after being recalled to Paris for consultations. He was sent back to help try to get two stranded French reporters out of Syria – Edith Bouvier and William Daniels. Those reporters arrived in France Friday after being smuggled into Lebanon the night before.
 
Bouvier was wounded last week in a rocket attack in Baba Amr that also wounded British photographer Paul Conroy and killed American reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik. Conroy and Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa also were smuggled out of Syria this week.
 
Videos released by activists in Syria Thursday said Colvin and Ochlik were buried in Baba Amr. But the Syrian government claimed it had disinterred their bodies and would repatriate them. Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary murder probe into the attack that killed them.
 
In his first statements since the rescue, Conroy described the bombardment in Homs as “indiscriminate massacre” and said there were thousands of people there just “waiting to die.”
 
Speaking from a hospital bed in Britain, the former soldier told Sky News television Syrian government forces had begun their attacks at 6:30 every morning, “systematically moving through neighborhoods with munitions that are used for battlefields ... There were no targets.”
 
“It’s not a war, it’s a massacre, an indiscriminate massacre of men, women and children,” he said. He paid tribute to Colvin, saying: “ She just wanted to tell the truth. She was horrified.”
 
The West has stepped up its criticism of Assad’s regime amid mounting reports of atrocities at the hands of security forces. The U.S. has called for Assad to step down and Hillary Rodham Clinton said he could be considered a war criminal. The White House called on all countries Friday to condemn “disgraceful” brutality of the regime.
 
“The brutalities they carried out in the last 24 to 48 hours is disgraceful,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “It should be condemned by every nation.”
 
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blasted the West Friday for backing the Syrian opposition against the government, saying it has fueled the conflict. He stopped short of backing Assad in the crisis, saying Russia had no special relationship with his regime and refusing to predict that he would stay in power.
 
“We have no special relationship with Syria,” Putin told foreign news executives late Thursday at a meeting at his suburban Moscow residence ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections in Russia. Asked whether Assad had a chance to survive the crisis, he added: “I do not know this, I can give no kind of assessments.”
 
But his Foreign Ministry made clear that it will not be able to stop other countries from launching a military intervention if they try to do it without U.N. approval.
 
Putin called for both Syrian government and opposition forces to pull out of besieged cities to end the bloodshed.
 
Activist groups said protesters took to the streets in towns across Syria Friday, many of them met with tear gas, gunfire and mass arrests by Syrian security forces, under the banner of “Arming the Free Syrian Army.”
 
The Observatory said 10 people were killed in the town of Rastan near Homs when a mortar landed near marchers. The LCC said 16 were killed in the same event, among 75 reported dead nationwide.