Syrian tanks shell homs, anti-Assad demonstrators raise Erdogan posters

Army tanks shelled a residential district in Homs yesterday, said a rights campaigner in Syria's third city which has emerged as the most populous centre of defiance against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.” Homs is shaking with the sound of explosions from tank shelling and heavy machineguns in the Bab Amro neighbourhood," said Najati Tayara. Human rights campaigners said at least six civilians, including four women, where killed in raids on Sunni neighbourhoods and in an attack on an all-women demonstration just outside Banias on Saturday. Meanwhile, demonstrators in Banias had raised posters of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has had close ties to Assad, but disputed the official Syrian account of the violence. Erdogan said more than 1,000 civilians had died and he did not want to see a repeat of the 1982 Hama violence or the 1988 gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja, when 5,000 people died.