A few families have been allowed to leave opposition districts of the city, Syrian activists say
Syrian security forces have eased their week-long bombardment of the central city of Homs and let a few families leave opposition districts while thousands of protesters crowded the streets overnight, activists say.
Heavy shelling in Homs has killed hundreds in the last week as an 11-month uprising rages nationwide against the rule of the minority Alawite Shia president, Bashar al-Assad.
"Around 15 families were allowed to leave from Baba Amr and Inshaat," the opposition campaigner Mohammad al-Hassan told Reuters by telephone from Homs.
He said security forces had allowed the Sunni Muslim families out during the lull, but apart from the mass protests people were not venturing out of their homes.
"Heavy artillery has given way to sporadic anti-aircraft gunfire overnight, and rumours are being circulated by the regime that it is OK to go out in the streets today, but no one is doing that because no one believes them," he said.
Electricity and telephone lines were working in several districts of Homs after being cut off more than two weeks ago.
YouTube footage showed a crowd of several thousand people rallying in the Deir Baalba district, where a loyalist forces' roadblock was dismantled after it came under repeated attack by the rebel Free Syrian Army.
Youths with their arms around each others' shoulders danced and waved the green and white flags of the republic overthrown by Assad's Ba'ath party in a 1963 coup.
"God damn your soul, to hell with you Bashar. Our martyrs are going to heaven, Hafez and Bashar," they chanted, referring to the president and his father.
The lull came a day after a truce was struck between loyalist forces and rebels in the town of Zabadani, near Damascus, after a week of shelling by Assad's troops. Opposition sources say no similar negotiations have taken place in Homs.
Ministers from the Arab League, which suspended Syria in response to the crackdown, will meet in Cairo on Sunday to discuss forming a joint UN-Arab monitoring team in place of an Arab League observer mission that was suspended last month.
The proposal is to be discussed in a meeting in Cairo by a "Syria Group" made up of seven member states led by Qatar, according to the officials. The group would make recommendations to an Arab League foreign ministers' meeting scheduled for later on Sunday in the Egyptian capital.
Last month, the League pulled out its observer mission to Syria after it came under heavy criticism for failing to stop the bloodshed engulfing the country. The Syrians would be unlikely to accept a new observer team.
Assad's regime has pursued a harsh crackdown against the uprising since it began 11 months ago. The UN estimates that 5,400 people have been killed since March, but that figure is from January, when the world body stopped counting because the chaos in Syria had made it all but impossible to check the figures. Hundreds are reported to have been killed since.
The League officials said the Syria Group would also call on Syrian opposition groups to close ranks and unite under one umbrella, a move that they said would place more pressure on the Assad regime.
The Syria Group meeting would be preceded by talks in Cairo by the foreign ministers of the Gulf Co-operation Council, a regional grouping that brings together Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. The six nations, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been campaigning for a tougher stand against Assad's regime and may in their Cairo meeting offer formal recognition of Syria's National Syrian Council, the largest of Syria's opposition groups.
Russia and China last weekend vetoed a western and Arab resolution at the UN that would have pressured Assad to step down. The draft resolution demands that Assad halt the crackdown and implement an Arab League peace plan that calls for him to hand over power to his vice-president and allow creation of a unity government to clear the way for elections.
The veto prompted western and Arab countries to consider forming a coalition to help Syria's opposition, though so far there is no sign they intend to give direct aid to the Free Syrian Army.