A writer at the New Yorker, who is "in Syria and is remaining anonymous for security reasons," reports on the situation in the country:
[W]hen it was dark, the government’s artillery barrage came. Not all of parts of Homs were hit, but the sound kept everyone in the city awake. We heard shooting and explosions through the night; we were sick and worried, with the same, single thought: Hama all over again! (Bashar Assad’s father killed thousands there, thirty years ago.) I had already heard from friends who had been arrested since the protests began, who told me about how they had been shot with electricity, hit severely, stripped naked, and deprived of sleep.
When the morning came, we realized that the actual damage was not as bad as it had sounded, even though there were painful losses (fifteen were killed in Homs that day, and many wounded). This seemed deliberate: the government had, for the moment, kept the casualties in Homs, as in other parts of the country that protested, below the level that might push other countries to intervene, while also making as much terrifying noise as possible. I had little doubt that even those who kept to their homes and never protested would be haunted by the sounds they heard for a long time. The goal was to restore a state of fear.
The Dish 