BEIRUT (AP) -- The flashpoint Syrian city of Hama endured a fifth day under military siege Thursday, with a resident saying people were being "slaughtered like sheep" in the streets and families were burying their dead in home gardens or roadsides rather than risk a trip to a cemetery.
Food supplies grew short and residents shared bread, while phones, electricity and Internet were cut off or severely hampered.
There was no official count of the dead. One resident said around 250 people have been killed since Sunday. And a rights group that tracks death tallies reported up to 30 people were killed in Hama on Wednesday alone. The tolls could not be verified because of the difficulty reaching residents and hospital officials in the besieged city, where journalists are barred as they are throughout Syria.
One resident said he had seen gunmen in plainclothes randomly shooting people in the streets.
"People are being slaughtered like sheep while walking in the street," said the man, who spoke to The Associated Press by phone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "I saw with my own eyes one young boy on a motorcycle who was carrying vegetables being run over by a tank."
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(Reuters) - Syrian tanks tightened their occupation of Hama and amassed outside a defiant eastern city as President Bashar al-Assad ignored mounting international condemnation of attacks the United States says has killed 2,000 Syrians opposing his rule.
In Hama, residents said at least 45 people were killed as tanks occupied the city where Assad's father, the late Hafez al-Assad, sent in tanks and killed thousands to crush a rebellion in 1982.
"The sound of tank shelling and their heavy machineguns echoed in Hama all day. We fear many more martyrs. Most people in my neighborhood have fled," said one resident in Sabounia district, a small business owner who did not want to be named.
"The shabbiha (militiamen loyal to Assad) are cleaning the streets near the university campus to stage a pro-Assad march tomorrow as if nothing is happening in Hama," he told Reuters by satellite phone.
Electricity and communications have been cut off and as many as 130 people have been killed in a five-day military assault since Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, sent troops into the city on Sunday, residents and activists said.
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