• Syrian National Council claims scores killed in Homs
• UK under pressure to sever relations with Syria
• Egypt to prosecute 19 US citizens employed by NGOs
The head of the Arab League has said the Syrian army's use of heavy weapons against civilians is an escalation that edges the country towards civil war, Reuters reports.
Nabil Elaraby said in a statement:
We follow with great anxiety and irritation developments in the field situation in Syria, and the escalation of military operations in the city of Homs and rural areas of Damascus, and the Syrian armed forces' use of heavy weapons against civilians.
In the statement published by the Egyptian state news agency, Elaraby said the escalation took the crisis in Syria in "a serious direction", adding that it pushed conditions "towards civil war".
Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague (left), is expected to address the Commons on the situation in Syria at 3.30pm GMT today.
Following the UN security council vote on Saturday, Hague issued a statement commenting on the Russian and Chinese vetoes. He said:
The draft resolution, tabled by Morocco, supported Arab League efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria and called for an immediate end to all violence. It did not impose any sanctions, nor did it authorise military action. At every stage we worked to accommodate the concerns of some Council members and tabled a text which did just that. There was nothing in the draft to warrant opposition.
The Local Co-ordination Committees group (LCC) says 19 people have been killed in Homs so far today. The Syrian National Council told Reuters 50 have been killed in Homs.
The LCC says 26 people have been killed across Syria today so far, with four killed in Madaya, in Damascus suburbs, two in Aleppo and one in Idlib.
Due to restricted access for foreign journalists, the reported death tolls cannot be independently verified.
Syrian army defectors have announced the formation of a higher military council to "liberate" the country from President Bashar al-Assad's rule, Reuters reports.
The council, named "The Higher Revolutionary Council" and designed to supersede the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said its head was General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, the highest ranking deserter who had fled to Turkey. The council's spokesman is Major Maher al-Naimi, previously the FSA spokesman, according to a statement sent to Reuters. It said:
After consultations with defectors across the homeland and after careful organisation of their ranks the formation of a Higher Revolutionary Council to Liberate Syria has been agreed in response to the call of freedom and ahead of freeing Syria from this gang.
The US-based Syrian dissident, Ammar Abdulhamid, was scathing about the announcement, coming against a backdrop of increasing bloodshed. He wrote:
In a typical fashion Syrian opposition groups responded to the massacres by issuing more statements and forming new groups and councils that decried divisiveness. Today, the highest ranking officer to defect to Turkey, Major General Mustafa Ahmad Al-Sheikh, announced the formation of the High Syrian Council for the Liberation of Syria. Two days ago, a group of 70 Syrians announced the formation of the National Current for Change.
The Syrian government has denied its forces are shelling Homs. Instead, the state news agency, Sana, reports (Arabic) that "armed terrorist groups" have stormed homes, attacking the occupants.
Additionally, it reports "armed terrorist groups" attacking civilians in Zabadani, near the border with Lebanon, which has also been shelled today, according to activists.
The Guardian's Abdel-Rahman Hussein has an update of developments from Egypt, including the continued fallout from the deaths at a football match last week:
Parliament has convened again to discuss the latest developments and what can be done to handle the fallout of events since Wednesday. The death toll since the tragic events at the football match has now reached 13.
More walls have gone up in downtown Cairo and numerous attempts at brokering truces have been wrecked by the liberal use of teargas by security forces. Sunday night saw some of the worst clashes as police armored vehicles drove up to the field hospital and started firing buckshot under cover of teargas, forcing the field hospital to move.
More walls have been built in the area around the Interior Ministry. Streets which saw the majority of fighting such as Nubar and Mansour now have three-tiered block walls on them. This ability to keep protesters far from the ministry didn't stop security forces from continuing to fire teargas at them. And it was from behind those walls that the assault on the field hospital took place.
Meanwhile, recommendations of the national security committee in parliament seemed to place culpability of the entire affair squarely on the old regime, and thus their advice that the cabal in Torah prison be split up has been heeded.
Additionally, it is expected that ousted president Hosni Mubarak will be moved from the International Medical Centre to the hospital of Torah prison today.
In a blogpost, entitled "Why won't you help us?" the US-based Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid argues that if the rebels were properly armed, Homs would be "liberated".
The story on the ground in Homs in particular is this: loyalists cannot stand up to local rebels in direct combat, they are always pushed out to the outskirts of rebellious communities after each assault, and they are in fact losing ground. But from their position on the outskirts they can continue to inflict damage on rebels by indiscriminately pounding their strongholds with artillery and mortar fire. That's what's happening in Old Homs, and that's what's happening in the town of Rastan, among other restive communities.
Should rebels lay their hands on more sophisticated weaponry, the entire momentum of the current conflict will shift to their side. Liberated town will become truly liberated and protected, and the Assad and their loyalists will be forced to be truly on the defensive for once. It's only when this situation is created on the ground that the world can push for a negotiated settlement. By that time, the Assads will have been sufficiently weakened within their own camp as well for other likely leaders to emerge and influence the decision-making process.
Video has been posted online purporting to be of the pipeline in the beseiged Homs district of Babr Amr, where an explosion was reported by activists this morning (see 9.45am).
It is not only Homs that has come under heavy attack today, according to activists. The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) report the shelling by heavy artillery targeting homes in Zabadani, near the border with Lebanon. Zabadani was described by some last month as Syria's first liberated city. This video purports to show a house that was shelled in Zabadani.
The LCC also reports a "complete siege" of Deraa, in the south, with people prevented from entering or leaving. It also says there has been continuous gunfire.
A brief update from Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh looks happy enough in this picture, taken as he left the Ritz-Carlton hotel in New York on Sunday, but he was confronted by protesters. One demonstrator reportedly threw a shoe, narrowly missing him.
Saleh, who is due to be replaced by his deputy in a one-candidate election on 21 February, is on what is officially described as a private medical visit to the US.
He was badly injured by an explosion in his palace last June but there have been suggestions to the medical reasons were just an excuse to get him away from Yemen. Last month, Gerald Feierstein, the US ambassador in Sana'a, was quoted as saying: "We think that him not being here [in Yemen] will help the transition, we think it will improve the atmosphere."
Saleh has been granted immunity from prosecution by the Yemeni parliament but on Sunday the New York protesters were calling for him to be referred to the international criminal court. Some of them chanted: "ICC not NYC".
As has become customary in recent days, the Syrian government and opposition are trading accusations over explosions at oil pipelines. No sooner had activists reported an explosion at a pipeline in Baba Amr (see 9.45am) than the Syrian state news agency, Sana, has said an "armed group" has attacked a pipeline in Jobar, also in Homs.
The last remaining member of Hamas's Damascus-based politburo has now left Syria, according to a German news agency report carried by Haaretz. Imad el-Alami, a senior Hamas figure who was deported by Israel in 1991, arrived in Gaza on Sunday, via Egypt. The report says:
Hamas decided to leave Syria in order not to be seen as endorsing the regime of President Bashar Assad in his bloody crackdown against his own people.
An explosion has ripped through an oil pipeline feeding a main refinery in Homs, al-Jazeera is reporting, citing residents and activists.
The explosion, the second in a week that hit the pipeline, which carries crude oil from the eastern Rumailan field, occurred in the district of Bab Amr, an opposition stronghold under heavy tank and mortar bombardment and rocket fire by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, they said.
The BBC's Paul Wood, in Homs, spoke live to Radio 4's Today programme in a conversation punctuated by the sound of explosions in the background (thanks to BrownMoses below the line for the link to the Audioboo). He said people fear an invasion by government ground troops.
It was a quiet night till just dawn when at 6am we started hearing mortars falling, I would think about one every 30 seconds. That's been going on, on-and-off, for the past two hours. And also some heavier artillery has been used ...I spoke to the Free Army Commander last night ...and they have been trying to attack checkpoints on the periphery of this part of Homs but it really is absolutely futile when the government has tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy weapons. We are hearing a report this morning, not confirmed but from an eyewitness saying government troops have been moving up to the outskirts of this part of Homs, not military vehicles or tanks but ground troops. They haven't yet gone through the first rebel checkpoint, the Free Army checkpoint, so there's not yet an invasion but clearly that's what people fear is going to happen over the next day or so.
A number of videos purporting to show the results of today's shelling of Homs have been posted online. This one shows dense black smoke rising:
Another purportedly shows the field hospital, which the Local Co-ordination Committees group says was attacked today. (warning: graphic).
The BBC says the Syrian government has denied shelling Homs.
China's leading Communist party newspaper has defended Beijing's rejection of a United Nations resolution calling for Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, to resign. The People's Daily said western campaigns in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq showed the error of forced regime change. From the Guardian:
"The situation in Syria continues to deteriorate and numbers of civilian casualties keep rising. Vetoing the draft security council resolution does not mean we are giving free rein to letting this heart-rending state of affairs continue," said the paper, which echoes government thinking.
China, unlike its western critics, was acting "responsibly" for the sake of the Syrian people, it said. The author used the pen name Zhong Sheng, which can mean "voice of China" and is often used on articles giving Beijing's position on foreign policy.
"Currently the situation in Syria is extremely complex. Simplistically supporting one side and suppressing the other might seem a helpful way of turning things around, but in fact it would be sowing fresh seeds of disaster."
In an article for Slate, international affairs commentator Michael Moran looks at the UN security council and points out that the debacle over a resolution on Syria is only the latest of its many failings. It's not only the Russians and the Chinese who cast "narrow, paranoid vetoes", he says - and it's time to put a stop to it. Moran writes:
The idea that any power should preempt a majority of the planet's most powerful states simply by issuing a veto is the most egregious of all the anachronisms that have survived at the UN ... This veto power – far more than the theatre of the absurd that is the General Assembly – [does] more to undermine the institution than any other single factor.
Once vetoes are gone, the addition of a set of emerging powers and a consolidation of the French and British seats into a single EU vote would be possible. Japan, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt and perhaps South Africa added as permanent members would force real negotiations on the world's most important issues, transforming the United Nations from a sideshow to the main show.
Welcome to Middle East Live. The focus is once more on Syria where the bombardment of Homs is continuing.
Syria
• Syrian troops shelled neighborhoods in the restive city of Homs on Monday, a day after President Bashar al-Assad's government vowed to continue its deadly crackdown on the country's uprising, killing 50 people, the Syrian National Council said. The BBC's Paul Wood, in Homs, described "pretty constant shelling". The bombardment comes two days after another attack on the central Syrian city that activists say killed 200 people, the highest death toll reported for a single day in the 11-month uprising. The Local Co-ordination Committees activist group said Monday's bombardment hit a makeshift hospital in the tense neighborhood of Baba Amr, causing casualties.
• Russia may be seeking a "controlled demolition" of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule to save its sole major foothold in the Arab world against western rivals when its foreign minister and spy chief hold rare talks in Damascus this week, Reuters reported, citing an analyst at the British think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said he would travel to Syria on Tuesday along with foreign intelligence service director Mikhail Fradkov for talks with Assad. Lavrov revealed nothing about their purpose, but a foreign ministry statement on Sunday indicated he and Fradkov would at least press Assad, who has ruled out resigning and rejected his opponents as "terrorists", to make compromises.
• Britain is under pressure to withdraw diplomatic recognition of Syria, after Tunisia issued a call for Syria's isolation and protesters clashed with police outside the mission in London, the Telegraph reports. The foreign minister, William Hague, said: "We constantly review our diplomatic relations. We haven't taken any decision to sever our relations."
Egypt
• Ignoring a US threat to cut off aid, Egypt has referred 19 Americans and 24 other employees of non-profit groups to trial before a criminal court on accusations they illegally used foreign funds to foment unrest in the country. Egypt's military rulers had already deeply strained ties with Washington with their crackdown on US-funded groups promoting democracy and human rights and accused of stirring up violence in the aftermath of the uprising a year ago that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
• Egypt will prepare Cairo's Torah prison hospital so it can receive ousted President Hosni Mubarak from the military hospital where he is now detained, an interior ministry official said on Sunday. Protesters, who have clashed with police for four days demanding an end to military rule, have long complained that the ruling generals have been sparing their former commander the humiliation of prison by keeping him in a military hospital.
• Saboteurs on Sunday blew up a pipeline in Egypt that supplied gas to Israel, the 12th such attack in a year, security officials said. Masked gunmen planted explosives under the pipeline near the town of El Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, they said. Witnesses said they heard a loud explosion before a large fire broke out. Sources said that the attack on the pipeline occurred the day after an Islamist leader from the area died in his prison cell in Cairo. Interior ministry officials said he died from natural causes.