Group reports 135 recent deaths in Syria

BEIRUT -- A Syrian activist group reported yesterday that 135 people have been killed across the country, including in the embattled city of Homs where a team from the Syrian arm of the Red Cross brought aid to one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

The activist group did not say whether all 135 died yesterday or were killed during the past few days. Many of the dead and wounded are believed to be from the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered late yesterday. Also in the neighborhood are two wounded journalists along with the bodies of two of their colleagues who were killed last week.

Parts of Homs have been under siege for nearly four weeks, making it difficult for rescue workers to get to the wounded and for families to bring their injured and dead to the hospital or aid stations.

The high casualty figures reported by the Local Coordination Committees, one of the main Syrian activist groups, demonstrated the increasingly bloody toll the conflict is taking on Syria where President Bashar Assad is trying to suppress an uprising of Syrians demanding he step down.

Earlier yesterday, Syrian officials announced the results of a referendum on a new constitution held the day before. They lauded the new charter as a step toward political reform, but the United States and its allies have dismissed the vote as a "farce" meant to justify the regime's bloody crackdown on dissent.

Syrian state TV said 89 percent of eligible voters approved the new document, while 9 percent rejected it. It put turnout at 57 percent of Syria's 14.9 million eligible voters. Syria's main opposition groups boycotted the vote, and violence elsewhere prevented polling.

Yesterday, a Syrian official accused the West of trying to destabilize the country for its own gain and warned that militarizing groups seeking to topple the country's ruler will backfire. The comments by Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi in a rare interview with The Associated Press were echoed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and sought to respond to mounting criticism of Assad's increasingly bloody crackdown.