Red Cross to bring aid to ravaged Baba Amr

The Red Cross was to bring aid to a ravaged district of the Syrian city of Homs Friday after regime troops routed rebel fighters, capping a monthlong siege. Red Cross and Red Crescent workers planned to deliver food and medical supplies to an estimated 4,000 civilians living in the devastated, snow-covered Baba Amr neighborhood -- held by rebels until they were defeated late Thursday by Syria's elite 4th Armored Division, led by Brig. Gen. Maher Assad, a younger brother of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The aid workers planned to evacuate the wounded during a promised 2-hour cease-fire set to begin Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The committee received the go-ahead from Damascus after Maher Assad's 7,000-strong unit -- the best-trained and best-equipped in the Syrian army -- overran the longtime rebel enclave. The official Syrian Arab News Agency said the regime's army had "cleansed" Baba Amr of "foreign-backed armed groups of terrorists." The regime then approved the Red Cross request. The opposition Free Syrian Army, largely made up of defected Syrian army personnel, said it decided to "strategically withdraw" from the district "for the sake of civilians remaining inside," who have endured tanks, heavy artillery, rockets and mortars daily since Feb. 4. The departing fighters warned the regime not to retaliate against civilians and urged the ICRC to help the neighborhood, which lacks food, water and electricity -- a situation made worse by snow and freezing rain. One of the few videos to emerge Thursday from Baba Amr, where communication links were all but severed, showed residents crouching on a road as they tried to collect falling snow in buckets for drinking water. Temperatures were in the low 40s with sunshine Friday, but overnight temperatures into Saturday were forecast to drop below freezing. The rebel defeat came as the U.N. Security Council -- including Russia and China -- released a statement deploring "the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation" and calling on the Assad regime to grant U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos "immediate and unhindered access." Russia and China vetoed two resolutions condemning the bloody crackdown and calling for Assad to step down. Separately, the main opposition political group, the Syrian National Council, said Thursday it would set up a military "bureau" to coordinate armed resistance to the regime. Council President Burhan Ghalioun, a political sociologist at Paris' New Sorbonne University, told reporters the council was initially dedicated to a non-violent revolution. But Syria now faces "a new reality," he said. He said any weapons intended for the rebels should be channeled through his group. Saudi Arabia and Qatar back the rebel movement and have said they would consider arming the insurgents.