Homs Districts Battered, 14 Killed across Syria

Syria's army pounded besieged, rebel-held districts of Homs city as troops and rebels clashed across the country on Monday, a watchdog said, adding that 14 people were killed in violence.

"Regime troops continue to shell the Khaldiyeh, Jurat al-Shiah and the Old City neighborhoods of Homs," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The troops clashed with rebels on the edges of besieged areas of the central city, including Sultaniyeh, which neighbors the once rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr, where blasts were heard.

The area surrounding Baba Amr has seen violent clashes in the past few weeks, four months after regime troops reclaimed it from rebels following a month-long bombing campaign.

Elsewhere in the central province of Homs, troops violently shelled Rastan as they escalated their attempts to storm and take over the rebel-held town, the Britain-based group said.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, regime forces pounded Ariha with shells and heavy machine gunfire, killing at least six people, the Observatory said.

An amateur video shot in Ariha and distributed by the Observatory showed a man lying in a pool of blood, his arms outstretched, as well as several people piled onto the back of pick-up trucks.

It was unclear whether the people in the vehicles were dead or alive.

Of those killed on Monday, 11 were civilians, two were civilians and one was a rebel, according to the watchdog.

It is not possible to independently verify death tolls for the conflict in Syria since the United Nations at the end of 2011 ceased compiling such figures.

However, the Observatory estimates that more than 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising erupted in mid-March last year.