Homs shelling continues despite outrage over Colvin\'s killing

Failure to stop President Al-Assad from killing civilians was a "deeply frustrating situation" Britain will push for a tightening of the diplomatic and economic "stranglehold" on Syria at a meeting of regional powers in Tunisia on Friday, Foreign Secretary William Hague said.Hague said he would bring up the Syria issue on Thursday at talks on the sidelines of a major conference on the future of Somalia which is taking place in London.
"I will be discussing today with (US Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton and many of the Arab leaders what we can achieve at that meeting (in Tunisia). I think part of that has to be tightening a diplomatic and economic stranglehold on the Assad regime," he told the BBC.
Hague said the failure to stop President Bashar Al-Assad from killing civilians was a "deeply frustrating situation", but ruled out military action like the NATO-led offensive against Libya last year.
Military action against Syria would be "much more complicated and would have to be on a much greater scale than in Libya, so that's not something we're likely to embark on," Hague said.
He said the international community had "supplied food rations and other emergency supplies" to Syrians affected by the violence.
"People have been dying in their thousands, that continues, the Assad regime continues to act seemingly with impunity," he said, a day after two western journalists were killed in shelling of the Syrian city of Homs.
"But I think we can agree a wider set of measures across a large group of nations, I think we can tighten the European Union sanctions on Syria when we meet on Monday."
He added: "Clearly the economic measures that we are adopting make the life much more difficult for the Assad regime. We have cut off a quarter of their revenues for instance by stopping all oil imports to Europe."
The "Friends of Syria" conference in Tunis will gather top diplomats from the Arab League, Europe and the United States, along with the opposition.
Russia has denounced the meeting as one-sided and refused to attend. China has also refused to commit itself.
Meanwhile, despite the killing of veteran Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochikil provoked international outrage, the shelling of Homs appears to have intensified. The situation has run so much out of control that, at this stage, nobody is able to leave the city. The Guardian website reported its correspondent in Homs as saying: "It's hard, very tiring. And now I don't think I'll be able to leave either that side of the city or the other. We tried yesterday to transfer the whole hospital towards Damascus but we were stopped on the road; there were people killed...I've been here now for about three weeks; I am very tired. I thought I was going to go home tomorrow and I had organised a means of transport. But it seems there is no longer a chance of getting out..."
Also the veteran French surgeon Dr Jacques Bérès, who has been operating in Homs for three weeks, was quoted on the Guardian's liveblogging as saying that he no longer believes he can leave the city, which is being "almost constantly bombarded."
Earlier on Thursday, the Syrian government said today that it cannot be held responsible for the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in Homs yesterday.
Due to the highly critical situation in Homs, Colvin ad Ochlik may have to be buried in the city as it remains cut off, according to Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.On a Facebook group for foreign correspondents Bouckaert wrote: "The roads out of Homs towards Lebanon are effectively blocked by the Syrian army at the moment. There is no refrigeration, ice, or electricity to keep their bodies refrigerated, so there is an increasing likelihood that they will have to be buried in Homs if we don't manage to move things very quickly. And the same blocked roads prevent the movement of the wounded. No real progress on the diplomatic front,: the Guardian liveblogging reported.
Syrian forces have shot dead unarmed women and children, shelled residential areas and tortured wounded protesters in hospital under orders from the "highest level" of army and government officials, United Nations investigators said today.