CNN) — Syrian government forces are using detained civilians as human shields, placing them on tanks in the besieged city of Homs to prevent the opposition Free Syrian Army from fighting back, an opposition activist said.
The latest tactic came as shelling rained on city’s Baba Amr neighborhood once again Sunday, residents say, marking at least the eighth straight day President Bashar al-Assad’s troops have pummeled Homs in an attempt to wipe out the opposition.
“My house is dancing. I am almost dead because of the siege,” said the opposition activist, named Omar.
Three civilians were killed in Sunday’s shelling on Baba Amr, according the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group. A fourth civilian was killed by gunfire near the town of Bab Houweid, the group said.
CNN cannot independently confirm details of the fighting in Syria because the government has severely limited the access of international journalists.
While residents in Homs wonder whether their house will be the next attacked, Arab League members gathered in Cairo on Sunday to discuss its next steps on Syria.
Nabil el-Araby, the league’s secretary general, suggested that the United Nations deploy a joint force of U.N. and Arab League military experts on the ground as an observatory mission, a league official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak to the media.
Abdel Baset Sida, a senior official from the Syrian National Council who was at the Arab League meeting, said his group had discussed with el-Araby several options, including the possibility of a joint U.N.-Arab League mission.
Russia has accepted the Arab League proposal, according to a foreign minister of one of the Arab States taking part in the league meeting. Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution aimed at halting the violence, drawing anger from many world leaders.
The Arab League will impose unprecedented sanctions on Syria, according to the foreign minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was directly involved in ongoing discussions.
Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ahmad al-Dabi, of Sudan, resigned as head of the league’s monitoring mission in Syria, the Arab League official said. The mission was suspended late last month amid increasing violence in the country.
“The Syrian Leadership has chosen chaos,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Sunday. “It is killing its people and destroying the nation only to maintain its authority. What is happening in Syria leaves no doubt that it is not ethnic or sectarian war or urban warfare. It is a campaign of mass cleansing to punish the Syrian people and enforce the regime’s authority without any humanitarian or ethical regards.”
Syria, which routinely blames the violence on “armed terrorist groups,” said Sunday on state-run news agency SANA that “martyrs” of two terrorist attacks in Aleppo were buried.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri weighed in on the conflict as well, in a new video posted online Saturday, calling al-Assad “the butcher son of a butcher” and praising the Syrian people for waging “jihad.”
“Oh our brothers in Syria, do not rely on the West or the Arab leaders or Turkey. Do not rely on the Arab League because you cannot give what you do not have. Only rely on God … All of these parties do not want Syria to be a free, Muslim, stable, strong nation against Israel but instead weak and divided from its tradition, and they want Syria to recognize Israel and engage in international injustice.”
Â
