Death Toll Is Said to Rise in Syrian City of Homs

International Herald Tribune Saturday 4th February, 2012

BEIRUT - Syrian opposition leaders raised the death toll to 260 in a military assault on Saturday on the ravaged central city of Homs, an attack that they described as the government's deadliest in the nearly 11-month-old uprising.

Reports were contradictory, given the difficulty of communications with Homs, and the Syrian government denied the death toll, calling it an attempt at propaganda ahead of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Saturday on Syria. But videos smuggled out of the city and reports by opposition activists showed a harrowing barrage of mortar shells and gunfire that left hundreds more wounded in the city.

"It's an unprecedented attack," said Mohammed Saleh, an opposition activist from Homs who recently fled to a nearby town to escape the mounting strife there.

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