Syrian artillery pounded rebel-held areas of Homs today as president Bashar al-Assad's government announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in a referendum derided as a sham by his critics at home and abroad.
The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful protests has spawned an armed insurrection by army deserters and others.
However, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the besieged Baba Amro district of Homs and evacuated three people today, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
Foreign reporters in the area were not evacuated and the bodies of two journalists killed there had not been recovered, it said.
While foreign powers argued over whether to arm the rebels, the Syrian Interior Ministry said the reformed constitution, which could keep Dr Assad in power until 2028, had received 89.4 Per cent approval from more than 8 million voters.
Syrian dissidents and Western leaders dismissed as a farce yesterday's vote, conducted in the midst of the country's bloodiest turmoil in decades, although Dr Assad says the new constitution will lead to multi-party elections within three months.
Officials put national voter turnout at close to 60 per cent, but diplomats who toured polling stations in Damascus saw only a handful of voters at each location. On the same day, at least 59 people were killed in violence around the country.
Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in advocating arming the Syrian rebels, given that Russia and China have twice used their vetoes to block any action by the UN Security Council.
"I think we should do whatever is necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves," Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said in Oslo.
Arab countries should help lead a military force to provide a safe haven for anti-Assad forces inside Syria, he added.
Dr Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed "armed terrorist groups" and his main allies - Russia, China and Iran – fiercely oppose any outside intervention intended to add him to the list of Arab autocrats unseated by popular revolts in the past year.
China called US policy in the region "super-arrogant" and Russia's Vladimir Putin warned against any action that bypassed the UN security council.
International "impotence" was described by French foreign minister Alain Juppe as "hugely frustrating".
But, accusing the Syrian authorities of "massacres" and "odious crimes", he said Paris would keep on pressing for action at the security council and warned Dr Assad that he would be brought to justice.
Shells and rockets crashed into Sunni Muslim districts of Homs that have already endured weeks of bombardment as Dr Assad's forces, led by officers from his minority Alawite sect, try to stamp out an almost year-long revolt against his 11-year rule.
"Intense shelling started on Khalidiya, Ashira, Bayada, Baba Amro and the old city at dawn," opposition activist Mohammed al-Homsi told Reuters from the city.
"The army is firing from the main thoroughfares deep into alleyways and side streets."
The ICRC has been pursuing talks with the Syrian authorities and opposition forces for days to secure access to besieged neighbourhoods such as Baba Amro, where local activists say hundreds of wounded need treatment and thousands of civilians are short of water, food and medical supplies.
ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said a team from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent team had entered Baba Amro.
"They have been able to evacuate three persons, including an aged woman, and a pregnant woman and her husband," he said.
The trio were believed to be Syrian and did not include four Western journalists trapped in Baba Amro, two of them wounded. A US reporter and a French photographer were killed there on February 22nd.
"Neither the foreign journalists nor the bodies of the journalists were evacuated for reasons we are not aware of due to the very tense security situation and difficult communications," Mr Hassan told Reuters in Geneva.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine people had been killed by the attacks on Baba Amro.
Syrian activists reported today the discovery of the bodies of at least 62 people near Homs, but the identity of those killed was disputed.
Some activists said they were families from Baba Amro who were kidnapped as they tried to flee the neighbourhood. But others said they were minority Alawite Muslims, the same sect of Islam to which embattled Dr Assad belongs.
Crowds gathered in the sensitive Damascus district of Kfar Souseh, home to several security agency headquarters, to mourn three young men killed in a protest yesterday, a witness said.
"Only Allah, Syria and freedom" they chanted, instead of the officially sanctioned slogan "Only Allah, Syria and Bashar".
Russia said its diplomats in Syria were trying to arrange a humanitarian truce in Homs and suggested that Western countries should pressure rebel forces there to cooperate.
International consternation has grown over the turmoil in Syria, but there is little appetite in the West for military action akin to the UN-backed Nato campaign in Libya.
Qatar's prime minister suggested this was indeed a model to follow, but said Arab and Islamic nations should take the lead.
"It seems the government and president of Syria have taken a decision to continue the killing, hoping that they could stop the uprising," Sheikh Hamad said.
"We will stay with the people. We will help them and do what is needed to be done."
Qatar, a small but wealthy Gulf state, helped Libyan rebels oust Muammar Gadafy last year with arms and special forces.
Criticising the Russian and Chinese veto, Sheikh Hamad said: "Since we failed in the Security Council ... we have to try to do something to send enough military help to stop the killing."
French president Nicolas Sarkozy said, however, that Western powers hoped diplomacy could change minds: "We are putting pressure on the Russians first and the Chinese afterwards so that they lift their veto."
Russian prime minister Putin reiterated Moscow's opposition to any military intervention in Syria.
"I very much hope the United States and other countries ...do not try to set a military scenario in motion in Syria without sanction from the UN security council," said Mr Putin.
The European Union agreed more sanctions, targeting Syria's central bank and several cabinet ministers, curbing gold trading with state entities and banning cargo flights from the country.
Moscow, however, advocates dialogue between the Syrian government and opposition to end the bloodshed.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called the referendum "an important step on the path of reforms" and criticised as "one-sided" Friday's "Friends of Syria" gathering in Tunis at which Western and Arab powers met Syrian opposition leaders.
The new constitution drops a clause making Dr Assad's Baath party the leader of state and society, allows political pluralism and limits a president to two seven-year terms. But this restriction is not retrospective, implying that Dr Assad (46) and already in power since 2000, could serve two further terms after his current one expires in 2014.
The opposition dismisses the reforms on offer, saying that Dr Assad, and his father who ruled for 30 years before him, have long paid only lip service to existing legal obligations.
Reuters