Security Council should meet to stop Homs massacre — GCC

RIYADH: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) called Monday on the UN Security Council to convene urgently and lift the siege on the city of Homs in Syria.
In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the six-member GCC act with dispatch "to prevent the illegitimate Syrian regime and its allies from committing massacres and atrocities against the people of the city and its countryside."
The statement expressed "deep concern" over the "unjust siege Syrian regime forces are imposing on Homs... with military support from the militias of the (Shiite) Lebanese Hezbollah movement and under the umbrella of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.”
GCC members states include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Rebel-held districts of Homs, dubbed the “capital of the revolution” by activists, have been the target of a new offensive since Saturday by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
Homs is important because it is on the road linking the capital city of Damascus to the coast and its central location is also key as a supply route.
The third largest city in Syria was one of the first to join the uprising against the Assad regime more than two years ago.
Saudi Arabia also reiterated its call for a UN resolution “banning the supply of arms to the Syrian regime which has lost all it legitimacy.”
Prince Saud said the European Union to needed to help change the balance of power before Assad's forces decimate the opposition.
In a statement after the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the government urged the European Union to “immediately implement” its decision to lift an embargo on weapons destined for Syrian rebels.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal earlier urged the EU to start arming the Syrian rebels so as to change the balance of power.
More than 100,000 are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict so far, which flared when Assad loyalists launched a bloody crackdown on pro-reform protests in March 2011.

• Additional input from Agence France Presse