BEIRUT (AFP) - Syrian warplanes on Sunday bombed the Baba Amr district of Homs hours after insurgents attacked the former rebel stronghold that was devastated by an army siege last year, a watchdog said.
"The air force is bombing Baba Amr," which thousands of residents have returned to since it was taken by the army last March, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.
Rebels had launched a surprise dawn attack on the battered Homs neighbourhood for the first time since they were driven out by the army a year ago in a bloody campaign that lasted more than a month and left hundreds dead. The Observatory said the central Syrian city was "completed surrounded" by the army, and that "no one has the right to enter or leave."
Regime troops closed off several roads around Baba Amr, which was almost entirely under siege. Earlier, activists said the rebels had entered the district by stealth before launching their attack. "The rebels infiltrated Baba Amr during the night. Those manning the army checkpoints barely had time to realise what was going on," said Omar, an activist who was also in touch with the insurgents. Baba Amr gained notoriety during last year's bloody siege, with dozens of bodies also found in neighbouring districts of Homs, including those of people fleeing the fighting, which also claimed the lives of two foreign journalists.
American reporter Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times in Britain and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik were among those who died when a makeshift media centre in Baba Amr was shelled by Syrian forces. The army, which controls around 80 per cent of Homs, launched an offensive several days ago aimed at capturing rebel enclaves, notably in the northern Khaldiyeh district and in the old city, using helicopters to bombard them.
In a video posted on the Internet on Sunday, a rebel announced "a 'great victory battle' to liberate neighbourhoods (controlled by the army), namely Baba Amr, and ease the pressure on our comrades and on besieged Homs districts."
The assault on Baba Amr district came as UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that the number of Syrian refugees, which has already passed the million mark, could double or triple by the end of the year.
Activists said the raid sparked fierce fighting on the ground and saw President Bashar al-Assad's forces call in air strikes in a bid to repulse the rebel fighters. They said offensive was a bid to take pressure off other rebel-held areas following the launch last week of an widescale army offensive in Homs, which has been dubbed 'capital of the revolution' against Assad's forces.
In the oil-producing east, where rebels hold large swathes of territory, insurgents including the Al-Nusra Front have set up a religious council to administer police, judicial and emergency services in the area, the groups said in a statement. "God commanded the Islamic battalions to form a religious council in the east to administer the affairs of the people and fill a security gap," said the statement, distributed by the Britain-based Observatory.
Video footage showed a convoy draped with black flags bearing Islamic inscriptions in the Deir Ezzor area and rebels attaching a banner to a building in Mayadeen, on which is written "Religious Committee of the Eastern Region."
Unknown before the uprising, Al-Nusra Front has been a standard-bearer since mid-2012 when it became the spearhead of the insurgency ahead of the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army.
Damascus accuses both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of financing groups and labels all armed opposition "terrorists" financed from abroad in the insurgency which the UN says has killed more than 70,000 people since March 2011.At least 160 people were killed across Syria on Saturday, and if no solution is found to the bloodletting the number of refugees could greatly multiply, Guterres told reporters in Ankara.
Many refugees are living in dire conditions in camps across Syria's borders, with officials in Jordan on Sunday reporting that a man was killed in a fire that swept through his tent during the night at the Zaatari camp. Two of his children were seriously injured in the blaze.