BBC today

The government has denied the Red Cross access to Baba Amr for four consecutive days, citing security concerns.

Activists have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Electricity, water and communications have been cut off, and in recent days temperatures have plummeted and snow has fallen. Food supplies are said to be dangerously low, and many people are too scared to leave.


Opposition and human rights activists have said security forces and pro-government militia have been rounding up men and boys over the age of 14 who are still in Baba Amr, and then torturing and killing them.


One woman, who had walked for three days to escape, said that on Friday troops had taken 36 men and boys from one area and killed them.

"My son's throat was cut," she said. "He was 12."

Her husband said he was hiding about 50m away and saw one soldier hold down their son's head with his boot while another killed him.

"I could hear their screams," he added.

Another woman said: "They took our husbands. They took them at a checkpoint. They will slaughter them like sheep."

Several men who said they had defected from an elite army unit last week told our correspondent that civilians were being targeted by security forces and prisoners were being killed.


An independent commission of inquiry set up by the UN Human Rights Council said in February that Syrian security forces had "committed widespread, systematic and gross human rights violations, amounting to crimes against humanity, with the apparent knowledge and consent of the highest levels of the state".

It also found anti-government groups had committed abuses, but not "comparable in scale and organisation to those carried out by the state".

The EU has said it will document alleged war crimes to set the stage for a "day of reckoning" for Syria's leaders. But Russia and China have vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions critical of the government.

The director-general of the ICRC, Yves Daccord, earlier spoke of his concern about the humanitarian situation in Baba Amr.

"The situation is extremely difficult, the weather conditions are tragic," he told Swiss Radio and Television (RTS).


Russia is a key Syrian ally and the largest supplier of arms to the Assad regime "It is very cold, there is fighting and people don't have access to food or water, and above all there is a big problem of evacuating the wounded."


Diplomatic pressure appeared to be growing on Russia on Monday to drop its support for President Bashar al-Assad.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he hoped Moscow would "see that it stands on the wrong side of history" in regard to Syria.