Syria: No Red Cross access to battered district

An image take from video posted online by Syrian opposition activists allegedly shows a young resident of Baba Amr, Homs, collecting snow to melt as drinking water, Feb. 29, 2012. / Youtube

Last Updated 11:30 a.m. ET

CBS News' George Baghdadi in Damascus contributed to this report.

(CBS/AP) GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Cross says Syrian authorities have blocked an aid convoy carrying emergency supplies from entering the Baba Amr district in the city of Homs.

The president of the Red Cross says the decision to deny aid groups access to Baba Amr is "unacceptable."

Jakoba Kellenberger was quoted in a statement Friday saying the aid group would stay in Homs overnight in the hope of entering Baba Amr "in the very near future."

The Syrian government had given the Red Cross permission Thursday to enter Baba Amr after security forces took the district from rebels.

"We have been trying to get into Baba Amro since the afternoon with no luck," Damascus-based ICRC spokesman Saleh Dabakka told CBS News.

"Apparently, we will spend the night in Homs today. It is getting dark soon and it is safer to stay there. We will give it another shot tomorrow," Dabakkaa added.

Dabakkaa also said that bad weather and heavy snow in the region was hampering the journey.

Seven trucks, loaded with food and medicine, and three ambulances left Damascus early Friday on its way to Homs after gaining a green light from the Syrian authorities to enter Baba Amro and give assistance to people in need.

It was unclear how many civilians remained in Baba Amr on Friday, with reports putting the population still inside the district - which has been without food, water or power supplies for weeks amid the intense government assault - at anywhere from 10,000, to virtually nobody.

Video posted online by opposition activists showed residents apparently trying to collect falling snow to melt as drinking water.

Rebel fighters abandoned Baba Amr, a stronghold of the opposition since the uprising began almost a year ago, on Thursday. Activists said Assad's army was hunting down and assassinating handfuls of insurgents who stayed to cover their comrades' "tactical retreat."

The United Nations' human rights office expressed alarm Friday at the reports that summary executions were taking place after the Syrian government forces retook Baba Amr.

A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the global body had received unconfirmed reports of "a particularly grisly set of summary executions" involving 17 people in Baba Amr.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday the Syrian government will pay for the violence it's committing against its own people, reports CBS News correspondent Larry Miller.

"What I think matters is building the evidence," Cameron said, "so that we hold this criminal regime to account. . . . One day, no matter how long it takes, there will be a day of reckoning for this dreadful regime."

Reports from Homs could not be verified due to tight government restrictions on media operations in Syria, and the level of danger in Baba Amr specifically being so great that few Western journalists have been there in recent weeks.

The relief agencies were also to transfer the bodies of two Western journalists killed in Homs by a government rocket strike last month to Damascus for forensic examinations and to begin the repatriation process, Syrian government officials told CBS News, though the Red Cross has said they are still unclear what the situation in Baba Amr is, and could not confirm plans to evacuate the remains.

Activists showed video Thursday of the badly burned body of Marie Colvin, a U.S. war correspondent who worked for the U.K.'s Sunday Times, before she was apparently buried in a temporary grave in Baba Amr. French photographer Remi Ochlik was also killed in the strike on a makeshift media center in Baba Amr.

The successful evacuation yesterday of two French journalists, Edith Bouvier and William Daniels, means all four surviving Western journalists who remained in Homs after the bombing of the media center have been successfully spirited out of the country.

Wounded French reporter expected to fly home

Homs is about 12 miles northeast of the border with Lebanon, and cross-border smuggling has been key to the city's survival and to arming the rebels because of the links between Sunnis in northern Lebanon and the Sunni majority in Homs.

The United Nations said Syrian security forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians since the revolt began last March. Syria's government said in December that "armed terrorists" had killed more than 2,000 soldiers and police during the unrest.

Assad, a London-trained eye doctor, is increasingly isolated in his struggle to crush a vocal opposition movement which formally announced Thursday that it was militarizing with a move to unite disparate armed rebel groups under the Free Syrian Army - comprised largely of defected Syrian soldiers.

[silvalgal]

No more excuses and stalling from the insane Syrian regime -- and no more tolerance and leniency from the international community. Horror and outrage at the regime, and equal horror and outrage at the lame response is universal at this protracted, surreal juncture.

[silvalgal]

No more excuses and stalling from the insane Syrian regime — and no more tolerance and leniency from the international community. Horror and outrage at the regime, and equal horror and outrage at the lame response is universal at this protracted, surreal juncture.

[silvalgal]

It did seem amazing that the Red Crescent and the ICRC would be allowed to proceed to Baba Amr, given the insanity and the deeply shocking images of the burned out, heavily shelled district, with any horror inside, but this bipolar about-face is indicting and bizarre. The regime-driven insanity has to stop. Let the aid in now. The world needs to know, and any survivors are in dire need of help. Only British PM Cameron makes sense in his reaction to this outrageous horror.

[jnostromo]

If the un had any guts, they would locate asaad then carpet bomb his location...then issue an ultimatum..surrender or face hellfire rain

[rainbowroosie]

I read in a blog how Syrian forces destroyed numerous copies of the Koran when they used artillery on the people. Are they guilty of a crime for destroying the books?