Red Cross Demands Syria Allow Aid Convoy to Reach Baba Amr

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says Syria's refusal to allow an aid convoy to enter the battered Bab Amr district of Homs is unacceptable.

The ICRC said the convoy reached the area after departing from Damascus early Friday, but Syrian authorities denied its entry. Syrian officials originally authorized the convoy to enter on March 1.

The ICRC convoy met up with ambulances from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Homs. They hoped to deliver food, medical treatment, blankets, and other supplies to those who remain in Baba Amr.

Baba Amr has suffered almost constant bombardment since the Syrian army surrounded the district 26 days ago. Food, water, heating oil, and other basic necessities are scarce.

It is unacceptable that the people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help, ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger said.

We are staying in Homs tonight in the hope of entering Baba Amr in the very near future. In addition, many families have fled Baba Amr, and we will help them as soon as we possibly can, he added.

The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) announced on Thursday that it will leave the district in what it called a tactical withdrawal.

Government forces have since regained control.

The FSA claims that only 4,000 people remain in Baba Amr, home to 100,000 before the onslaught.

The army cleansed Baba Amr from the foreign-backed armed groups of terrorists, Reuters quoted an official at Syria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates as saying.

Activists' accounts from the city tell of systematic executions and arrests after the army moved in following the rebel withdrawal.

The Syrian army was holding the convoy up because they want to clean up after what they have done in Baba Amr, an activist in Homs told Reuters.

The massacres are continuing. They are torturing them and killing (detainees) one by one. They are executing them in batches, another activist said.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon spoke to reporters Friday demanding that aid workers be allowed into Syrian towns and cities.

The images which we have seen in Syria are atrocious. It's totally unacceptable, intolerable. How as a human being can you bear ... this situation? That really troubles me. I'm deeply sad seeing what's happening, Ban said.

The Syrian authorities must open, without any pre-conditions, to humanitarian communities, he continued.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for The U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman, said the agency received unverified reports of a particularly grisly set of summary executions in which 17 were killed after government forces re-took Baba Amr.

Syria will not allow U.N. emergency aid chief Valerie Amos to enter the country in order to observe humanitarian conditions.

After twice vetoing U.N. Security Council measures to condemn Syria, Russia and China joined the Council in expressing deep disappointment in the decision not to allow Amos' entry.

The U.N. estimates that the Syrian army has killed at least 7,500 civilians since activists began to protest against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.