Surrounded by a small crowd of ululating women and deferential men, some of them weeping, the Syrian leader stood amid the rubble and told residents that he had been left with no choice but to use force to end the rebels' stranglehold over the suburb.
"The state gave those who had strayed from the right path every chance to surrender their weapons, but they rejected and escalated their terrorism," he said. "So we had to act to bring back peace and security and to impose the law."
He promised that "life will return to normal in Baba Amr, better than it was before".
Raising hopes of a possible end to the violence, Mr Assad's government accepted a UN-backed initiative calling for a ceasefire, even as the United Nations released an estimate that the civilian death toll since the uprising began had climbed to more than 9,000. » | Adrian Blomfield | Middle East Correspondent | Tuesday, March 27, 2012
