- NEW: The ICRC is distributing food in two neighborhoods adjacent to Baba Amr
- NEW: Journalist Marie Colvin's remains will arrive in the U.S. on Tuesday
- Regime forces arrest hundreds in two days, opposition activists say
- A Free Syrian Army official says the regime is changing tactics because of the rate of defections
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(CNN) -- After pummeling the western city of Rastan over the weekend, government troops turned their lethal attention to cities across the country Monday, opposition activists said.
Three people were killed in the southern province of Daraa, and one was killed in each of the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, said the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an opposition activist group.
The Syrian regime has also ramped up raids and arrests across the country, detaining hundreds of civilians in the past two days, the network said Monday. It said Syrian journalist and blogger Rafaa Masri was among those recently detained.
The Syrian government, meanwhile, said 12 "martyrs" from the army were buried Monday.
The latest violence came as rebel forces said they had driven out the army in Rastan -- but also ceded that most of their fighters had retreated from the besieged area, which sits between the flashpoint cities of Homs and Hama.
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Red Cross denied access in Syria Government forces pounded Rastan with 15 rockets in 15 minutes Sunday, killing three people and wounding dozens more, most of them children, opposition activists said. Graphic video posted on YouTube shows three girls, including a 1-year-old, suffering from severe injuries purportedly sustained in that attack.
Capt. Ammar al-Wawi said the Free Syrian Army's withdrawal from Rastan "was strategic to save the people's lives."
"We don't want to give the regime any excuse to kill more civilians," Wawi said Monday. "It was a tactical withdrawal in order to create better circumstances and to get ready for the next step."
Though they are outnumbered and out-armed by the Syrian military, members of the Free Syrian Army managed to attack an air force intelligence building in Harasta, near Damascus, with machine guns Sunday night, FSA deputy head Malek al-Kurdi said.
"The operation in Harasta is part of the response to the massacres of the regime against our unarmed people," Wawi said. "After the regime committed massacres in Homs and other Syrian cities -- in addition to targeting the journalists and the civilians in the country -- the Free Syrian Army moved our operations to the offensive phase in defense of the Syrian people."
Wawi said he thinks a growing number of defections from Syrian troops are affecting the government's tactics.
"The regime is avoiding direct confrontations with the FSA fighters, so they attack and bomb the cities using artillery ... and rockets because when they fight us on the ground, we always end up getting more defectors joining our sides," he said.
Meanwhile, residents in the devastated Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs endured another day with scarce or no access to running water, electricity and medical supplies, as the humanitarian toll of the nearly year-old Syrian conflict escalates.
Carla Haddad Mardini, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Monday that aid workers still aren't allowed into Baba Amr -- despite previously getting permission from Syrian authorities to do so.
Mardini said the ICRC and the Syrian Red Crescent were delivering food and hygiene kits in two neighborhoods adjacent to Baba Amr -- al-Tawzee and al-Inshaat.
"We were supposed to be there yesterday but we were not allowed," Mardini said. "A convoy of aid materials arrived today to Homs from Damascus and it contains food supplies to cover the needs of several thousand people."
According to SANA, the state-run news agency, authorities were busy Sunday "removing the destruction and debris left by the armed terrorist groups" in the Baba Amr and Inshaat neighborhoods of Homs."
The Syrian regime has consistently blamed violence on "armed terrorist groups" and portrayed its forces as trying to protect the public interest and security.
CNN cannot independently confirm reports across Syria because the government has severely restricted the access of international journalists.
But the vast majority of reports out of Syria indicate President Bashar al-Assad's forces are slaughtering civilians in opposition hotbeds in an attempt to wipe out dissidents.
The remains of Marie Colvin, a U.S. journalist who was killed in the conflict, will arrive in the United States on Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Paris said.
Syria's crackdown on civilians seeking al-Assad's ouster has drawn widespread criticism from the international community.
On Sunday, Israel -- which has fought Syria in four wars since Israel's statehood in 1948 -- offered humanitarian assistance to Syrian citizens.
"The state of the Jewish nation cannot sit still while horrors are taking place and people are losing their world in a neighboring country," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said. "It is our moral duty to provide aid and awake the world to stop the manslaughter."
Israeli President Shimon Peres also had a message for the Syrian people.
"The Middle East is undergoing its greatest storm in history, with horrible bloodshed in Syria, where a tyrant is killing his people, killing his children. I admire the courage of the Syrian people. And I wish them peace and freedom from the depths of all of our hearts," Peres said Sunday.
The United Nations estimates more than 7,500 people have died since the beginning of the Syrian conflict almost a year ago, while the LCC says more than 9,000 people have been killed. The Syrian government says more than 2,000 security personnel have been killed in the violence.
CNN's Salma Abdelaziz and Holly Yan and journalists Omar Muqdad and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy contributed to this report.
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_world/~3/iIuxcVSAX0U/index.html
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