By Agencies

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Hundreds of people have been killed or injured in a major army offensive in the central Syrian city of Homs, activists say.

Activists talking to media in the early hours of Saturday said the army had used tanks, mortars and machine guns in the assault on the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood.

Hadi al-Abdallah, an activist in Homs, said that army defectors had captured 19 members of the security forces earlier in the day.

Activists said government forces were targeting the neighbourhoods of Bab Tadmour, Bab Dreib, and Karm el-Shami simultaneously, as the military campaign in Khaldiyeh intensified.

Video purportedly showing a building on fire in al-Inshaat neighbourhood was posted online, after activists said the area was also shelled by government forces.

"There has been non-stop bombardment in Baba Amr [neighbourhood of Homs]... They've been bombarding Bab Amr and Khaldiyeh non-stop with mortar bombs and tank shells ... it's just random bombarding on rooftops," Danny Abdul Dayem, an activist, said early on Saturday morning.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 14 soldiers were killed in clashes with opposition fighters and that five army defectors had lost their lives. The group cited witnesses saying 217 people had been killed in Homs, 138 of them in Khaldiyeh.

Homs is one of the flashpoint cities in Syria's uprising, and some areas, including Khaldiyeh, have become strongholds of the armed opposition.

UN vote

In a bid to halt the escalating violence, diplomats at the UN Security Council in New York have for days been debating a draft resolution condemning human rights violations in Syria.

A vote on the latest draft was expected as the council was due to meet in New York on Saturday.

On Friday, a senior US state department official said his country was "cautiously optimistic" that Syria's ally, Russia, would support the resolution.

The latest draft does not explicitly call on Assad to step down or mention an arms embargo or sanctions, though it "fully supports" an Arab League plan to facilitate a democratic transition.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, the official said: "From our perspective, this meets the objective of supporting the demands of the Syrian people and the Arab League... providing a peaceful Syrian-led political path forward."

Activists in Homs have been calling for foreign intervention to stop the violence there.

"We want any kind of intervention by any kind of troops. We want anyone to help us. Our Free Syrian Army only has Kalashnikovs, has machine guns. Some RPGs, some rockets. They cannot fight the whole Syrian army, that has tanks, that has planes," Dayem said.

"We want anyone to come in and help us. Civilians are dying, women are dying, kids are dying. Why isn't anyone doing anything about this? No-one is helping us."

Commemorating Hama

Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Syria on Friday to commemorate the 1982 massacre in the city of Hama, ordered by late President Hafez al-Assad, that killed tens of thousands.

"While we commemorate Hama massacres, the son [President Bashar al-Assad] is imitating his father," Burhan Ghallioun, the head of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition bloc, said.

The whole city [Homs] is being targeted by heavy weaponry. The hospitals are in siege by the regime tanks. They want the injured to become dead."