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Ammar, a resident of the Bab Tadmur district of Homs, cheap belts said the death toll exceeded 330."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?"

Homs is a hotbed of dissent to Assad's regime and is known to shelter a large number of army defectors. Despite near daily regime raids and fighting, many parts of it remain outside of government control.

Assad has tried to crush the mens leather belts revolt with a sweeping crackdown since March. But neither the government nor the protesters are backing down. The opposition, which began with peaceful protests, has turned more and more to arms, and the military and security forces have responded with progressively greater force.

But the past weeks suggest the regime is moving to qualitiatively more powerful assaults. Last week, the military launched a heavy offensive in the suburbs east of Damascus after dissidents showed greater control there. Three days of fighting saw some of the highest daily death tolls of the uprising, until the regime appeared to Hermes belts silence the dissidents for now.