The NYT raises an alarm:
A military crackdown on Syria’s seven-week uprising escalated Sunday, with reinforcements sent to two cities, more forces deployed in a southern town and nearly all communications severed to besieged locales, activists and human rights groups said. Fourteen people were killed in the city of Homs, they said, and hundreds were arrested. The breadth of the assault — from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria — seemed to represent an important turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year-long rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
And he seems to be getting help from Iran:
[I]n past days, those activists have complained that they have been almost entirely unable to speak with people in Homs and Baniyas, the most besieged places. Even satellite phones that protest organizers had smuggled across Syria were not working. … The reasons for the newfound ability to sever communications were unclear, but Obama administration officials have said Iran, which faced a similar uprising in 2009, has provided the Syrian government, a longtime ally, with coercive supplies like tear gas, along with communications equipment that might help interrupt activists’ phones.
Enduring America's early morning view:
And so a new phase in the conflict in Syria, as the military moved its occupation from Daraa in the south to the nearby town of Tafas, the coastal city of Baniyas, and Homs, the country's third-largest city with more than one million people. Activists indicate at least a dozen residents died in Homs on Friday, and there were reports yesterday that a 12-year-old was killed as the military moved in early on Sunday morning.
State TV continues to rationalise the military action with its own claims of violence, reporting that an armed gang shot dead 10 workers on their way back from Lebanon in an ambush near Homs.
Claimed video [above] of a demonstration in Baniyas at the funeral of a protester: "We sacrifice our blood and soul for martyrs / We sacrifice our blood and soul for Baniyas / There is no God but Allah, and martyrs are blessed by Allah / God is great, God is great".
Check AJE's live-blog for the latest.
The Dish 