Nation & World

Syrian forces unleashed a barrage of mortars and artillery on the battered city of Homs for hours before dawn on Saturday, killing more than 200 people in what appeared to be the bloodiest episode in the nearly 11-month-old uprising, activists said.

The government denied the assault, saying the reports are part of a "hysterical campaign" of incitement by armed groups against Syria, meant to be exploited at the U.N. Security Council as it prepares to vote on a draft resolution backing an Arab call for President Bashar Assad to give up power.

In the wake of the violence, angry Syrians stormed their embassies in Berlin, London, Cairo and Kuwait city, clashing with guards and police. Protesters in Cairo set fire to part of the embassy building.

With the violence in Syria growing increasingly chaotic, Western and Arab countries have stepped up their push for a U.N. resolution laying out a solution to the crisis, and a vote was scheduled for Saturday. But Russia, a strong ally of Syria, signaled Saturday it would veto any call for a political transition in the country.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Washington that if a resolution is put to a vote without taking Russia's opinion into account it will only lead to "another scandal" at the Security Council. He acknowledged some changes had been made in the draft resolution but said two more issues needed to be addressed.

In the Homs bombardment, the hardest hit area was Khalidiyeh, a mainly Sunni neighborhood in the mixed city. Residents described a hellish night of ceaseless shelling.

"We were sitting at home and the mortars just started slamming into buildings around us," said Mohammad, a resident of Khaldiyeh. "There was nothing that prompted it, not even protests... people are terrified today," he added by telephone.

Mohammad, who like other Syrians in Homs declined to be further identified, said the shelling started shortly before midnight and lasted until the early morning hours Saturday. He said residents were out Saturday inspecting the damage, looking for relatives and preparing for funerals. "It's a catastrophe, no other way to describe it."

Online amateur video posted by activists showed chaotic scenes in a makeshift clinic that appeared to have been set up in a Khaldiyeh mosque, the room filled with wounded men with gashes and broken limbs being bandaged. Several dead bodies are shown. In another video, fire ravaged a house that had been shelled, as people desperately poured water on the blaze.

The videos could not be independently verified.

The government denied the assault and said corpses shown in the amateur videos were of people kidnapped by "terrorist armed groups" who filmed them to portray them as victims of the alleged shelling.

Two main opposition groups, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, said the death toll in Homs was more than 200 people and included women and children in mortar shelling that began late Friday. More than half of the killings - about 140 - were reported in the Khaldiyeh neighborhood, they said.

"This is the worst attack of the uprising, since the uprising began in March until now," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the Observatory, which tracks violence through contacts on the ground.

The reports could not be independently confirmed.

It was not immediately clear what precipitated the ferocious attack on the eve of the U.N. vote, but there were reports that army defectors set up checkpoints in Khaldiyeh and several other districts and were trying to consolidate control.

Two activists from Homs who spoke on condition of anonymity also said gunmen, possibly army defectors, had attacked a military checkpoint in Khaldiyeh on Thursday night and captured 17 of its members, prompting intense clashes with the military.

Homs, Syria's third largest city, is a hotbed of dissent to Assad's regime and is known to shelter a large number of army defectors known as the Free Syrian Army. The city has seen several crackdowns by security forces but many parts of it remain outside of government control.

Ammar, a resident of the Bab Tadmur district of Homs, said the real death toll exceeded 330 people, and hundreds of others were wounded. He did not elaborate.

"A few more nights like this one and Homs will be erased from the map," said the distraught man by telephone. "We are being massacred, what is the Security Council still waiting for?" he asked.

"Homs is on fire," said another opposition activist in a quieter area near the city, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal.

"All sides are attacking each other and the number of casualties is more than anyone can count," he said.

Angry Syrians stormed their embassies in Berlin, London, Cairo and Kuwait, prompting some arrests.

In Cairo, the protesters set part of the embassy on fire Friday night. Activists urged people early Saturday to march to the embassy from Tahrir Square, the focal point of Egypt's protests, where a large tent has been erected in solidarity with the Syrian uprising.

The Kuwaiti news agency said "a number of security personnel" were hurt in the melee as protesters broke windows and hoisted the flag of the opposition at the Syrian mission in Kuwait city.

Assad is trying to crush the revolt with a sweeping crackdown since March. But neither the government nor the protesters are backing down, and clashes between the military and an increasingly bold and armed opposition have thrown many parts of the country into relentless violence.

The U.N. said in December that that more than 5,400 people have been killed in violence since March, but it has been unable to update its count for weeks due to the chaos. Hundreds more have been killed since that tally was announced.

The U.N. Security Council is scheduled on Saturday to take up the Syria resolution, with diplomatic efforts continuing up to the last minute to try to avert Moscow's veto.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was to meet Saturday with Russia's Lavrov on the sidelines of a security conference in Berlin.

Lavrov said the latest version of the resolution resolves "quite a number of things which were important to us." But, he said, it makes too few demands of armed groups opposing Assad's regime, and Moscow remains concerned about whether it prejudges the outcome of a national dialogue among political forces in Syria that it is trying to arrange.

The U.S. and its partners have ruled out military action but want the global body to endorse an Arab League plan that calls on Assad to hand power over to Syria's vice president.

"As a tyrant in Damascus brutalizes his own people, America and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder," she said. "We are united, alongside the Arab League, in demanding an end to the bloodshed and a democratic future for Syria."

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AP writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy in Beirut, Anita Snow at the United Nations, Aya Batrawy in Cairo and Hussein al-Qatari in Kuwait City contributed to this report.