Death toll in Syria climbs to 3,500

DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The death toll in Syria's eight-month uprising has climbed to at least 3,500 people, the United Nations said Tuesday amid some of the fiercest fighting yet.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the estimate conservative and said it was based on information from "credible sources on the ground," The New York Times reported.

The latest death toll came during what may be some of the most violent confrontations since the revolt began in March, the Times said, as government troops sought to reclaim control of the western city of Homs, Syria's third largest.

In just five days this month, government forces had killed 111 people, activists said, and news reports said two more were killed early Tuesday.

The Arab League-mediated effort to end the violence, which Syria said last week it would heed, apparently has collapsed.

In a country where fears of civil war abound, Homs has fought back harder against the government than other cities, the Times says, and the Sunni Muslim majority has joined the revolt while the Syrian military is seeing more defections.

"Homs is a turning point for now," said an analyst based in Damascus who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It's a successful model of self-defense, if you will, at a time when you really can't expect people to take any more. They've seen too many corpses come back, too many people arrested, disappeared or returned after abominable treatment. It's too much. And everybody seems to be losing control of the street."

Homs residents spoke of abandoned streets, explosions, incessant gunfire and residents forced to flee or stay indoors.

Members of the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group that helps organize demonstrations, said people in Homs were suffering from shortages of food, fuel, baby formula and medical supplies.