BEIRUT — Syrian authorities severed telephone lines, electricity and water supplies to Hama on Wednesday as troops backed by tanks pushed into the heart of the besieged city in what appeared to be a final effort to crush the protest movement there.
A resident contacted by satellite telephone said citizens were cowering indoors, unable to leave their homes because snipers deployed on rooftops were shooting at anything that moved and heavy shelling by tanks made it too dangerous to go outside.
The assault began at 5 a.m., when the phone lines went down, the lights went out, the water was cut off and tanks began rolling toward the city center, demolishing the makeshift barricades that residents had erected to keep them out, said Saleh Hamawi, an activist with the Syrian Revolution Coordination Union, a group that monitors and organizes protests.
“Everyone is very afraid, and no one can leave his house,” he said, as the sound of explosions echoed down the telephone line. Some residents in peripheral areas of the city had fled their homes, but those in the center were trapped, he said, as the military escalated its effort to crush the four-month old revolt against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
“It’s 1982 all over again,” he said, referring to an earlier massacre in Hama in which at least 10,000 people are believed to have died during the suppression of an uprising against Assad’s father and then-president, Hafez al-Assad. “This is a challenge to the international community, which is doing nothing.”
Columns of tanks were seen converging on Hama the day before, raising expectations that a major assault was imminent.
The Local Coordinating Committees, another group that organizes protests, said five people died in Hama on Tuesday, bringing to at least 130 the number killed across Syria since the government launched its offensive Sunday to quell the uprising ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
There has been no sign, however, that the brutality is deterring the opposition, and anger at the bloodshed in Hama may have only served to intensify demonstrations. Since Sunday, protesters have taken to the streets in numerous locations across Syria after daily evening prayers.
Nearly 2,000 Syrians have been killed in the four-month-old rebellion, and the violence “is getting worse,” the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said in Senate testimony Tuesday. “The Syrian government’s constant brutality, its refusal to allow peaceful marches, its insistence on widespread arrest campaigns and its atrocious torture . . . they are, in turn, fostering more violence,” the diplomat said.
At the United Nations, the Security Council held a closed-door meeting to review a resolution — drafted by European countries and supported by Washington — that would condemn Syria’s attacks on protesters.
The resolution, originally introduced in May, had stalled because of opposition from Russia and China. But on Tuesday, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official told news agencies that his country was “not categorically against” a resolution, as long as it did not impose sanctions.
In Washington, Ford told senators that the Syrian government’s crackdown in places such as Hama and the eastern city of Deir el-Zour “had an impact,” adding that countries that had opposed Security Council action “are potentially now more open to some kind of action.”
U.S.-based leaders of the Syrian opposition movement met with Clinton at the State Department on Tuesday, the first time they had been granted such high-level access. During the hour-long discussion, they pressed for stronger international measures against the Syrian regime.
“It is clear that Clinton is fully aware of what is happening in Syria and is looking for a way to help us,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a human rights activist who fled Syria in 2007.
The six activists called for stronger U.S. leadership on oil, gas and weapons sanctions against the regime. They also asked the administration to call for Assad to leave office and for the International Criminal Court to charge him with crimes against humanity. They said Clinton had expressed concern that the Syrian government could try to portray such actions as evidence that the uprising was American-sponsored.
Ziadeh said the activists urged Ford to remain in Damascus and keep up links with the opposition.
Italy recalled its ambassador to Syria on Tuesday to protest the Damascus government’s crackdown, but it did not appear that other European countries would follow suit.
Also Tuesday, three senators said they would introduce a bill to penalize companies investing in Syria’s energy sector or selling gasoline to the country. Such a measure would mostly affect Canadian, European and Chinese energy companies.
The measure, announced by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), would extend existing sanctions to foreign companies.
Toner told reporters that the U.S. government planned “to move forward with additional sanctions under existing authorities, and we’re exploring the scope of those sanctions.”
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