Syria: 7 killed in Homs bombing

Mohammed Hassan,an opposition campaigner in Homs,told Reuters that a 55-year-old woman was among those killed by shellfire on the Bab Amro district.

Meanwhile,gunmen shot dead a senior Syrian military doctor outside his home in Damascus,the state news agency SANA said.

It said an armed terrorist group killed Brigadier-General Issa al-Khouli,who it described as a doctor and hospital director,in the Rukneddine district of the Syrian capital.

Khouli was the most senior official to be reported killed in Damascus since the start the uprising. The bloodshed followed a day of violence across Syria on Friday,when bombings targeting security bases killed at least 28 people in Aleppo and rebel fighters battled troops in a Damascus suburb after dark.

Assad has ignored repeated international appeals,the latest from the European Union,to halt his crackdown.

I am appalled by the reports of the brutal attacks by the Syrian armed forces in Homs. I condemn in the strongest terms these acts perpetrated by the Syrian regime against its own civilians, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The government offensive on opposition-held,mostly Sunni Muslim areas of Homs has killed at least 300 people in the past week,according to activists. Food and medical supplies are running low in blockaded areas,where many people are trapped in their houses,fearful of coming under fire if they step out.

World powers fear a slide into all-out civil war which could inflame a region already riven by revolts and rivalries from Bahrain and Yemen to Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Gulf Arab states,the US,Europe and Turkey are leading diplomatic efforts to force Assad to end his rule. But they have ruled out a military intervention of the kind that helped bring down Libyas Muammar Gaddafi last year.

Assad can count on the support of Russia,Syrias main arms supplier and an ally stretching back to the Soviet era,as well as Iran. Moscow,which is keen to counter US influence in the Middle East,insists foreign powers should not interfere.