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Assault on protest hubs kills 57 in Syria

Russia boycotts key meeting; Red Cross demands immediate truce

AFP, Damascus
Syrian forces yesterday killed 57 civilians as they blitzed the city of Homs and a village in Idlib province, monitors said, as the Red Cross sought a truce to deliver aid and the United Nations demanded unimpeded access for aid groups.
The escalation comes as Russia, a key ally of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, said it will boycott an international conference in Tunis this week aimed at seeking political change in Syria and China
refused to commit.
It also comes ahead of the weekend referendum on a new constitution that could end nearly five decades of rule by Assad's Baath party.
At least 33 civilians were killed in an operation by Syrian forces in the village of Abdita in the northwestern province of Idlib that extended to the neighbouring villages of Ibleen and Balshon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. And despite a plea by activists on Monday to allow women and children to flee Homs' besieged Baba Amr neighbourhood, troop reinforcements were sent to the outskirts of the restive city, which residents say has been under assaultfor 18 straight days.
Activists fear they are preparing to storm its defiant neighbourhoods.
The Observatory said 16 people, including three children, died in "intensive shelling" that targeted Baba Amr, with the Khaldiyeh and Karm al-Zaytoun districts also blasted.
Eight more civilians, including a child, were reportedly killed by gunfire elsewhere in the country.
Homs-based activist Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, who had earlier voiced fears of an imminent ground attack against Baba Amr area, told AFP "large reinforcements were heading to Homs."
Omar Shaker, another activist, told AFP the neighbourhood had "no electricity, nor fuel," and that "snipers have hit water tanks," rendering the situation "bad beyond imagination."
The International Committee of the Red Cross called for a daily truce of two hours in Syria so it can deliver vital aid to afflicted areas, after saying a day earlier it was in talks with both sides to halt theviolence.
The head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad welcomed the call, but voiced doubts that the "criminal" regime would commit.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, said Syria was increasingly underpressure.
A Friends of Syria meeting in TUnis on Friday will "demonstrate that Assad's regime is increasingly isolated and that the brave Syrian people need our support and solidarity," she said on a visit to Mexico.
Russia announced that it will not take part in the meeting because it was being convened "for the purpose of supporting one side against another in an internal conflict," the foreign ministry said.
Moscow is deeply suspicious of the conference's intentions after a similar coalition on Libya was used to provide air support for the opposition against former Libyan dictator and Moscow ally Muammar Gaddafi.