U.S., allies to turn up pressure on Syria

BEIRUT – The United States and allied governments seeking the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad were expected to exert new pressure today on Syrian authorities to agree to a cease-fire and allow humanitarian aid into besieged areas such as the battered central city of Homs.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is among the many diplomats scheduled to arrive today in Tunis, the Tunisian capital, with a goal of turning up the heat on Assad’s government.

“We’ve got to find ways to get food, medicine and other humanitarian assistance in to those affected by violence,” Clinton said Thursday in London, where she and other diplomats discussed Syria, among other issues.

Meanwhile, inside Homs, two wounded journalists appeared in Internet videos seeking help to be evacuated. The city is under siege from government troops.

“I need a cease-fire quickly and a medical vehicle, or a vehicle in good condition, to be taken to Lebanon to be treated as quickly as possible,” pleaded Edith Bouvier, a freelance reporter working for the French daily Le Figaro, who said she suffered a badly broken leg. “The surgeons here have done what they can, as best as they can, but they cannot perform an operation.”

Medical treatment inside Homs is said to be primitive, with many makeshift clinics set up inside private residences, always under the threat of shelling or attack.

The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition coalition, reported at least 101 deaths in Syria on Thursday, including 26 in the city of Hama, north of Homs, and 46 in the restive northwestern province of Idlib. The numbers could not be independently verified because media access to Syria is limited.

On Wednesday, the violence took the lives of a pair of Western journalists, Marie Colvin, a U.S.-born reporter with the Sunday Times of London, and Remi Ochlik, a French photographer. They were reported killed in the shelling of a makeshift media center in the Baba Amr district. Their bodies remained in Homs as news organizations and diplomats worked for a way to extract the remains amid the ongoing conflict.