UN divided as tanks besiege Syrian cities

Hundreds of tanks and troop carriers were deployed on Wednesday near the Syrian protest hubs of Deir Ezzor and Hama, activists said, as the UN Security Council was to made for a third day on the Syria crisis. The 15-member Security Council has been struggling since Monday over how to respond to a crisis that Russia warns is veering toward civil war, amid growing pressure on the United States to take a tougher line. "There are some 100 tanks and troop carriers on the highway leading to the central town of Hama and about 200 tanks around the eastern town of Deir Ezzor," Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said. He told AFP that all telephone and Internet communication had been cut in Hama and nearby areas. Abdel Rahman added that two people were killed late Tuesday when security forces opened fire on demonstrators in the northern town of Raqqa and a third was killed during a protest in the coastal town of Jableh. In Hama, tanks were deployed in several districts and shelling could be heard across several neighbourhoods, another activist told AFP. "From the sound of the shelling, it sounds like it's open warfare," the activist said. The Local Coordination Committees, which represents the protesters, said that tanks had moved deep into Hama which was undergoing heavy shelling while plumes of smoke could be seen over the city of 800,000 residents. "People are deserting the city and are faced by live gunfire from security forces and army troops if they don't respond to orders to go back inside," the Coordination Committees said in a statement. It reported security checkpoints in and around Hama and said a building and several homes collapsed due to the shelling. The Coordination Committees also reported that a nine-year-old boy was killed on Tuesday in the coastal city of Latakia when shots were fired at his house. The accounts could not be independently verified as foreign reporters are not allowed to travel in Syria to report on the unrest. The fierce crackdown on Hama -- where an estimated 20,000 people were killed in 1982 when the government crushed an Islamist uprising -- has prompted solidarity protests across Syria over the past two days. Divisions, meanwhile, remained among the 15 members of the Security Council on the wording of any condemnation of President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on protests and whether it should be a formal resolution or a less weighty statement. European nations, which agreed to change their draft resolution on Syria following pressure from opponents, said progress had been made but Russia said the "required balance" still lacked in the new version. Tuesday's second day of arduous talks ended with each country sending the draft text back to their national governments ahead of new negotiations on Wednesday. Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin called the new text "detrimental" to efforts "to do everything possible to pull away from the brink of civil war where Syria is finding itself, unfortunately and tragically." International pressure on the Security Council to agree on a stand has mounted since weekend violence in which an estimated 140 people were killed in a military offensive on Hama and other protest towns. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington is "working to move forward with additional targeted sanctions" and exploring broader sanctions that would "isolate the Assad regime politically and deny it revenue with which to sustain its brutality." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon vented his growing anger at Assad's refusal to acknowledge international criticism, particularly after the weekend military offensive in Hama. Assad "must be aware that under international humanitarian law, this is accountable. I believe that he lost all sense of humanity," Ban told reporters on Tuesday. The official SANA news agency has accused "armed terrorist gangs" of seeking to scare residents of Hama and Deir Ezzor by spreading false information it said was aimed at sowing unrest and harming the army's image. "We urge citizens to ignore these rumours being spread and confirm that the army is working to restore order in towns where these groups are operating," SANA said. State television also aired an amateur video showing corpses being thrown from a bridge into a river, and said the bodies were of security forces killed by anti-government protesters. Rights activists, however, have challenged that account saying the victims were pro-democracy protesters killed by the army. Some 1,600 civilians and 370 members of the security forces have been killed since pro-democracy protests erupted in Syria in mid-March.