• Bombardment of Homs continues for a fifth day
• US says it won't arm Free Syrian Army
• Russia calls for a Arab solution to the crisis
9.08am: Danny Abdul Dayem, a Syrian activist who was spent time in Britain, has recorded another video appeal from the Bab al-Amr district of Homs [warning: graphic content].
Speaking beside the body of a dead infant in a field hospital he said: "This child lost his brains. A bomb landed in his house... is this what the UN is waiting for?"
8.43am: (all times GMT) Welcome to Middle East Live. The focus continues to be Syria where the accounts and images emerging from the city of Homs get ever grimmer. The Syrian Army's bombardment of the city has entered its fifth day despite a fresh pledge by president Bashar al-Assad to end the violence.
Here's a roundup of the latest developments:
Syria
• Armoured forces loyal to president Assad killed at least 47 civilians as they thrust into Homs on Wednesday, firing rockets and mortar rounds to subdue opposition districts, activists said, Reuters reports. Tanks entered the Inshaat neighbourhood and moved closer to Bab Amro district in the central Syrian city. "We counted 47 killed since midnight," activist Mohammad Hassan said by satellite phone.
• The latest video footage from Homs suggests residential areas are being targeted.
A clip from activists purports to show a residential tower block being hit by a missile.
• Russia has put itself at the centre of efforts to resolve the deepening Syrian crisis, calling for an "Arab solution" to the uprising against the Assad regime. Foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, flew to Damascus to hear Assad pledge a referendum on a new constitution and request that Arab League monitors – withdrawn last month – return to Syria. Assad promised to "stop violence regardless of where it may come from". But the regime's actions belied this statement.
• Residents inside Homs claim they are under "genocidal attack" from a Syrian regime apparently deaf to international opinion and determined to "bomb, starve and shoot" them into submission. They said Syrian army tanks had encircled opposition-held suburbs, in preparation for what they feared was a final, deadly ground assault.
• Assad was advised that the "American psyche can be easily manipulated" when he was preparing for a television interview with ABC's Barbara Walters in December, according to leaked emails reported to have come from within the Syrian regime. In an insight into the contempt shown for international public opinion by those advising the Syrian leader, one of his media aides suggested "the American audience doesn't really care about reforms. They won't understand it and they are not interested to do so".
• Arab and western governments scrabbling to find strategies to deal with the crisis in Syria are considering ways to strengthen opposition to the president, Bashar al-Assad, including supporting the Free Syrian Army. But western diplomats and analysts warn that sharp divisions in opposition ranks, the strength of the Assad regime and the difficulty of mounting covert operations all pose serious further problems.
• Arab and Western intervention in Syria would only escalate the killing, argues Seumus Milne.
If the opposition can't shoot its way to power and the regime doesn't implode, the only way out of deepening civil war is a negotiated political settlement leading to genuine elections. To stand any chance of success, that would now need to be guaranteed by the main powers in the region and beyond. The alternative of western and Gulf-dictator intervention could only lead to far greater bloodshed – and deny Syrians control of their own country.
• The Obama administration has insisted it is not planning to arm opposition groups in Syria but said it is looking at how humanitarian aid could be provided to the Syrian people. Asked whether arming the Syrian opposition, White House spokesman Jay Carney said:
We are not considering that step right now. We are exploring the possibility of providing humanitarian aid to Syrians and we are working with our partners, again, to ratchet up the pressure, ratchet up the isolation on Assad and his regime. We're seeing a lot of indications of a lack of control over the country by the regime, of interest by senior officials within the military and the government in separating themselves from the regime. So we believe that that pressure is having an impact.
Asked about Lavrov's visit to Damascus, Carney said:
We're not sure what the goals of his visit are. But the point we're making is that Russia must realize that betting everything on Assad is a recipe for failure -- not just for Russia's interests in Syria, but for the stability of the region and for Syria's future. And I would just reemphasize what I said in response to the earlier question.
• Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be arming the opposition Free Syrian Army, but the western governments will be reluctant to take such a step, according to the Guardian's Middle East editor, Ian Black.
Western government are anxious to avoid a regional war, he says.
Iran
• The Iranian parliament has taken the unprecedented step of summoning president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to answer a series of questions over the government's handling of the economy and his personal judgements. Earlier this month, representatives of Ahmadinejad had met MPs in an attempt to address their concerns about the president. But Mostafa Reza Hosseini, a spokesman for the MPs, told the semi-official Mehr news agency that they "had not been convinced by the answers", resulting in their summoning the president, in a motion signed by 79 of Iran's 290 MPs.
Bahrain
• The authorities in Bahrain have freed two human rights activists, ahead of planned protest to mark the first anniversary of crushed pro-democracy uprising, the BBC reports. Fadheela al-Mubarak was freed on Monday, nearly a year after she was arrested for listening to what was called "revolutionary music" in a car. The other activist was Naser al-Raas, a Kuwait-born Canadian citizen who was serving a five-year term for breaking Bahrain's illegal-assembly laws.
