DAMASCUS, March 3: Syria faced harsh world condemnation on Saturday as it continued to block the Red Cross from delivering desperately needed aid to the vanquished rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in the city of Homs.

Britain and Turkey joined the international outcry accusing President Bashar al-Assad’s government of committing a crime by barring aid convoys from entering Baba Amr for the second day.

As the condemnation spiralled so did harrowing accounts of the situation inside Homs, where some 700 people were killed and thousands wounded by regime forces in a 27-day blitz, according to Human Rights Watch.

The HRW said shells sometimes fell at the rate of 100 an hour and that satellite images showed 640 buildings visibly damaged, but stressed that the real picture could be worse.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the refusal to grant humanitarian aid access to citizens affected by violence showed how ‘criminal’ the regime had become.

“We will go on arguing for action at the UN and for the international community to pull together because the denial of humanitarian aid on top of all the murder, torture and repression in Syria just underlines what a criminal regime this has become,” Mr Hague said.

His Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu said the regime’s “savagery must stop.”

“The fact that aid is prevented and access is refused to United Nations officials constitutes another crime,” Mr Davutoglu said, calling for an international response.

On Friday, a seven-truck convoy organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society was barred from entering Baba Amr.

Syrian authorities said the decision was taken for security reasons, namely the presence of bombs and landmines.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded unconditional humanitarian access to Syrian cities, saying there were ‘grisly’ reports of summary executions and torture in Homs.

Meanwhile, the bodies of two western journalists killed in a rocket attack on a makeshift press centre in Baba Amr last month were handed over to the French and Polish embassies in Damascus.—AFP