Bab Amr Live Blog

3 weeks 2 days ago - Homs

The Telegraph has filed a report from the Homs neighbourhood of Bab Amr, which was under bombardment for a month as government forces tried to root out opposition fighters:

Along the main thoroughfares, the blackened holes of the apartment buildings stare down at the piles of broken bricks and burned out cars. Each building has its own sign of war – the smashed shutters of the shopfronts, the collapsed roof, the bedroom exposed to the daylight.
"At first, it seemed like an empty film set. But we walked on, among the first journalists allowed in since the end of one of the most fearsome sieges of modern times, the few hundred residents who have not fled peered out from their broken walls.
"A handful of black-clad women clustered around an outpost of the Red Crescent. A few more gathered around a man who had been allowed by the army to bring in a small selection of vegetables.
"Children pointed excitedly to the ruins, their new playground, running in and out of the piles of detritus."

Tags Bab Amr, syria, The Telegraph

6 weeks 4 days ago - Syria

Activists have posted a new disturbing video reportedly leaked from government troops.

The footage, shot during the military campaign on Homs' neighbourhood of Bab Amr in February, purports to show soldiers standing over the body of a dead man and chanting: "Allah, Syria, Bashar".

One soldier is heard saying: "Pull him".

"Tie him, tie him," another soldier says.

The soldiers later chant: "Shabiha [thugs] forever, just for you Assad".

Tags Bab Amr, homs, syria citizen video

7 weeks 5 days ago - Syria

This video, according to activists, was leaked from the Syrian Army. It shows a tank firing at buildings in Bab Amr neighbourhood from the University Bridge in Homs.

The cameraman is heard saying “God, Syria, Bashar” and saluting the army.

Tags Bab Amr, homs, syria citizen video

8 weeks 5 days ago - Syria

Activists have posted a series of videos showing what they say is the destruction in Bab Amr that resulted from the military campaign on this Homs neighbourhood.

Tags Bab Amr, syria citizen video

11 weeks 1 day ago - Syria

Saleh Dabbakeh, the ICRC's spokesman in Damascus, has confirmed to Al Jazeera that Valerie Amos, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs who is currently in Syria, followed the Syrian Arab Crescent officials into the Homs district of Bab Amr.

The visit lasted about 45 minutes, and the area they visited appeared largely deserted, Dabbakeh said.

Tags Bab Amr, homs, ICRC

11 weeks 1 day ago - Syria

Syrian Red Crescent aid workers who visited Bab Amr have reported back that "most inhabitants had left" the neighbourhood, an ICRC spokesperson has told the Reuters news agency.

Tags Bab Amr, homs, ICRC, reuters

11 weeks 1 day ago - Syria

Al Jazeera has just been speaking with Saleh Dabbakeh, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Damascus, who confirms that a Syrian Red Crescent team has indeed made its way into Homs today.

Here's what he had to say:

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent has been in Homs all long. They never really had left Homs [but were not in Bab Amr].
The more important thing is that today there were two teams, that were able to go around and distribute - one was able to distribute assistance in a village called Abel, it's 10km south of Homs, where there are hundreds of families that have been displaced from Homs. And they distributed food and non-food items. The other team was made only of Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers, and this team entered Bab Amr. They didn't really stay for a long time. We are now waiting for more information from the team that has gotten into the neighbourhood to see what has happened and what they have done.
I received a report from the team that has distributed materials today - food and non-food items to about 300-400 families that had been displaced from Bab Amr, who are now in a village near Homs. As I said, 10km south of the city of Homs. But I still did not get detailed information from the team that entered Bab Amr because they just did [so] about an hour or 45 minutes ago.

Tags Bab Amr, damascus, homs, ICRC, Sakeh Dabbakeh

11 weeks 1 day ago - Syria

A team of aid workers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the battered Homs district of Bab Amr on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says.

"A Syrian Arab Red Crescent team entered Bab Amr," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters in Geneva.

There was no information on what food or medical aid the Red Crescent workers were able to take with them. The ICRC has been waiting for permission from Syrian authorities to enter Bab Amr since last Friday.

Tags Bab Amr, homs, ICRC, reuters, Syrian Arab Red Crescent

11 weeks 1 day ago - Syria

A team from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent has entered the Bab Amr district of Homs, an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman has told the Reuters news agency.

Tags Bab Amr, homs, ICRC, reuters, Syrian Red Crescent

11 weeks 6 days ago - United Kingdom

A wounded British photographer who escaped the besieged Homs district of Bab Amr said on Friday that the month-long bombardment of the district was "an indiscriminate massacre".

Paul Conroy, 47, was speaking from a hospital bed in Britain, where he returned a couple of days ago after being smuggled to Lebanon on Tuesday.
"It's not a war, it's a massacre, an indiscriminate massacre of men, women and children," he told Sky News television.

The former soldier said Syrian government forces had begun their attacks at 6:30 every morning, "systematically moving through neighbourhoods with munitions that are used for battlefields... there were no targets".

He described the humanitarian situation as "more than a catastrophe", saying there was no power or water, and food was scarce.

"There's still thousands of people in Homs... they're living in bombed-out wrecks, children six to a bed, rooms full of people waiting to die," he said.
"They see no relief, nothing, other than waiting for the moment the soldiers come in, or the shell comes through the door."

Tags Bab Amr, homs, syria