BEIRUT (AP) ? Syria's main opposition bloc on Friday urged the international community to take action to protect civilians in the cities of Homs and Daraa that have been targeted by military as part of a government campaign to regain control of the territory it lost to the opposition.
The appeal comes as opposition figures meet in Turkey to elect a new leadership, including an interim government that would try to run rebel-held territories in Syria.
The Syrian National Coalition appealed to the United Nations and Western countries that have supported the opposition in Syria's civil war "to intervene immediately" and provide food and medicine to the besieged, rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs and Daraa in the south, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule began in March 2011.
More than 93,000 people have been killed in the conflict that began as peaceful protests but turned into an armed revolt after opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown.
Homs, a city of about 1 million people, has been an opposition stronghold since the early days of the uprising. Mass Arab Spring-inspired protests there starting in 2011 posed the most serious challenge to date to the Assad family dynasty that has ruled Syria since 1970. They brought punishing army offensive onto the city in spring 2012 that has killed hundreds of people and drive thousands out of their homes.
The government controls much of Homs, Syria's third largest city, while several neighborhoods in the center are opposition strongholds. Building on its capture of the strategic town of Qusair between the Lebanese border and Homs, the army launched an offensive in the city on Saturday, pounding rebel positions with artillery and airstrikes for five straight days, according to the SNC.
In a statement, the SNC said clashes between rebels and troops flared up again in Friday morning, along with shelling of residential areas of Sheik Miskeen and Jassim in Daraa.
"The areas under attack in Homs have been cut off from the rest of the world and suffer from an urgent shortage of medicine and food," the SNC said, appealing to its Western backers to support rebel units and provide them with more sophisticated weapons.
In Damascus, Syrian-state-run SANA news agency said that three people were injured in an overnight mortar attack in the capital's Dweilaa region.
In recent months, rebels fighting in the north have received more powerful weaponry, including anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles, likely supplied by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The U.S., which has provided opposition fighters with non-lethal aid, said recently it was willing to supply them with arms, but has been reluctant to do so for fear they could end up in the hands of radical Islamic groups that have been the most effective rebel fighting force.
The Western-backed opposition coalition is primarily composed of exiled politicians with little apparent support from Syrians inside the country, who are trying to survive the third summer of devastating conflict.
SNC acting leader George Sabra and senior opposition figures Louay Safi and Mustafa Sabbagh top the list of candidates for the new leadership that is expected to emerge from the coalition's two-day meeting in Istanbul. However, its members remain deeply divided and previous attempts to unite its ranks and devise a strategy for possible peace talks that the U.S. and Russia have been trying to convene in Geneva this summer have failed.
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Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.
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