More trouble in Syria

Nada Bakri has an article in The New York Times about the situation in Syria:

Syrian security forces tightened their grip on the central city of Homs and its surroundings, firing machine guns randomly and arresting scores of people in house-to-house raids, residents and activists said. Homs has been surrounded by security forces and troops since mid-March, when the popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began, inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. But recent operations were, by the accounts of many protesters, the biggest to date in Homs.
The military campaign came five days after a wave of sectarian killings in the city that threatened to provoke wider sectarian conflict across the country. Although most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, there are a number of sizable religious and ethnic minorities, and Assad and his ruling clan belong to the minority Alawite sect.
“Residents are very scared and worried,” said an activist in Homs who gave only his first name, Abdallah. “There is random shooting, burning and destroying buildings, and a lot of arrests and raids.” He said that neighborhoods of the city had been sealed off and that people were trying to build barricades in the streets to block raids by security forces. Other residents spoke of shortages of bread and other staples. One protester who gave his name as Mohammad said that residents were pleading for blood donations from nearby villages.
A spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, an umbrella group that helps organize and document protests across Syria, said from the group’s base in Beirut that at least one person had been killed in the military operation in Homs and that 150 people between the ages of fifteen and fifty had been arrested. The spokesman, Omar Idlibi, said that there had been heavy firing in at least six neighborhoods of the city and that phone lines and Internet connections were being cut. Three buildings in the Bab Sibaa area completely collapsed after being shelled, Idlibi said. “Every corner in Homs has revolted against the government, and there are reports of a lot of defections there,” he said. “This is scaring the regime, and that is why we are witnessing today the biggest operation against the city.”
In all, human rights activists and residents of Homs said that at least two dozen people have been killed in the city since Saturday. Abu Layth, a resident of Homs, said that people there were not able to walk the streets safely because snipers positioned on rooftops “are randomly shooting at anything that moves”.
The violence in Homs has alarmed the antigovernment protesters, who see in it a portent of civil conflict. Anger runs deep in Homs at the nation’s security forces, whose ranks are filled disproportionately by Alawites. For their part, Alawites in the city, whose support for the government is by no means universal, worry about vendettas and vengeance. “The situation scares me a lot,” said an Alawite mother of three who declined to give her name. “They’re taking the country into chaos, and that’s what they want.”
Human rights groups said that, across Syria, at least 1,400 people had been killed since the demonstrations against Assad began four months ago. The government disputes that figure and says that Islamist extremists are to blame for the unrest.
Assad has ruled Syria since 2000, when he inherited power from his father, Hafez al-Assad.