BEIRUT (AP) — At least two people were killed as Syrian troops renewed their shelling of a rebel-held area in the city of Homs on Friday, activists said, as the United States, Europe and Arab nations met in Tunisia to seek ways to ease the crisis.
More than 70 countries will participate in Friday’s “Friends of Syria” meeting, which is expected to press Syrian President Bashar Assad to agree to a cease-fire and allow for humanitarian aid to reach the areas that have been hardest-hit by his security forces.
In the run up to the conference, American, European and Arab officials said the group would likely impose harsher sanctions if Assad rejects the cease-fire and predicted that his opponents would grow stronger if he remained in power.
And in an effort to bring an end to the violence, the U.N. announced that former Secretary General Kofi Annan will be the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to deal with the crisis.
The Tunisia meeting is the latest international effort to end the crisis, which began when protesters, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere, took the streets in some of Syrian impoverished provinces nearly a year ago to call for political change.
Since then, Assad’s security forces have violently repressed the uprising, blaming it on Islamic extremists and armed gangs, while members of the originally peaceful opposition have taken up arms.
The U.N. estimated in January that 5,400 people had been killed in the conflict in 2011. Hundreds more have died since. Syrian activists say the death toll is more than 7,300. Overall figures cannot be independently confirmed because Syria has prevented most media from operating inside the country.
Also Friday, U.N.-appointed investigators in Geneva said they had complied a list of Syrian officials accused of crimes against humanity in the crackdown. The list reaches as high as Assad.
Russia and China have long opposed foreign intervention in Syria.
Two people died Friday in the renewed shelling of the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, activists said, the latest of hundreds killed there in recent weeks. The neighborhood, under siege and intense shelling for three weeks, has become the center of the revolt.
The activists spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.
