Syria Resumes Shelling Homs after Rejecting Peace Force

Regime forces resumed their assault on the Syrian protest city of Homs on Monday, activists said, after Damascus rejected an Arab plan to send a peacekeeping force to the unrest-hit country.

Shortly before sunrise, the army launched mortars into Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold in the central city, as forces swept through southern Daraa province arresting dissidents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The neighborhood of Baba Amr has been subjected to sporadic shelling since 5:00 am (0300 GMT) by the Syrian army," the Britain-based Observatory said in a statement sent to Agence France Presse.

"Forces launched an assault and are arresting people in Sasra al-Sham after an explosion in Dael, in Daraa province," cradle of the 11-month uprising against President Bashar Assad.

"There were fierce clashes between defectors and the army which stormed Lajat and arrested the mothers of four dissidents," it said.

Elsewhere, a sniper killed a civilian in the central city of Hama and three soldiers died in Rastan, a town in Homs province.

Rights groups say Assad's forces have killed at least 500 people in Homs since they began attacking the central city with a barrage or tank shells, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades on February 4.

After marathon talks in Cairo on Sunday, the Arab League said it had agreed to open contacts with Syria's opposition and ask the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force to the nation.

The 22-member bloc announced an end to its own observer mission to Syria, suspended last month amid an upsurge in violence.

Syria's ambassador to Cairo denounced the resolution, which only Algeria and Lebanon expressed reservations about.

"The Syrian Arab Republic categorically rejects the decisions of the Arab League," which "reflects the hysteria of these governments" after failing to get foreign intervention at the U.N. Security Council, said Yusef Ahmed.

Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to Syria's government, on Monday slammed Arab nations for backing the latest peace initiative, singling out Qatar.

"The Arabs have exhausted all avenues and all they can do now is bring in foreign forces to occupy Syria," it said.

"Qatar's leaders are behaving like megalomaniacs. They promised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bring down the Syrian regime."

The government daily Ath-Thawra said the League meeting "marked the peak of political and moral rudeness, which was at its lowest.

"The Arab League countries were trying to outbid each other as far scheming, betrayal and political prostitution."