Syria crisis: Besieged Homs receives more aid from UN
The UN is trying to supply food and medical aid to 3,000 civilians in besieged areas of Homs United Nations aid workers have again faced gun and mortar fire as they took more food and medicine into besieged areas of the Syrian city of Homs.
The aid workers are using armoured four-wheel-drive vehicles rather than trucks to carry the supplies.
It comes a day after a convoy from the UN and the Syrian Red Crescent was attacked, leaving several wounded.
Aid teams also evacuated more than 500 civilians from the rebel-controlled centre of Homs, a local official said.
Homs governor Talal al-Barazi said the operation to bring people out of Homs was continuing, Reuters news agency reports.
But opposition sources say a location where residents had gathered in preparation for being evacuated was shelled, leaving several civilians dead.
Reports from both sides said that shooting and mortar fire broke out shortly after a convoy of aid vehicles crossed into the rebel-held old quarter of Homs, says the BBC's Jim Muir, in Beirut.
Elsewhere, opposition activists said at least 11 people were killed in the northern city of Aleppo when government helicopters dropped barrel bombs - crude weapons comprising cylinders packed with explosives and metal fragments - on rebel-held neighbourhoods.
'Stark reminder'The operation to help trapped civilians in Homs was the one concrete agreement reached at recent peace talks in Geneva, which are due to resume on Monday.
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos has insisted that the UN and aid agencies will not be deterred by the weekend's violence.
Baroness Amos said she was deeply disappointed that a three-day ceasefire to allow aid into the old part of Homs had been broken.
A UN/Syrian Red Crescent aid convoy pushed its way into besieged areas of Homs on Saturday 
Workers were injured and vehicles damaged when the convoy came under fire 
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos says the global organisation's workers in Homs need "safety guarantees" The events were "a stark reminder of the dangers that civilians and aid workers face every day across Syria".
She said that the aid workers had been deliberately targeted and she commended their courage, adding that the UN would do "the best we can" but needed "safety guarantees".
The convoy came under attack from mortars and gunfire as it was leaving Homs on Saturday, the second day of the humanitarian ceasefire.
Syrian authorities have blamed the attack on rebels, but they in turn say that President Bashar al-Assad's forces were responsible for the incident.
The BBC's Jim Muir: "Relief teams trying to get help to trapped civilians found themselves sheltering for their lives"
The Red Crescent, in a joint operation with the UN, is trying to deliver food, water and medicine by truck to some 3,000 civilians in rebel-held areas.
"Although the team was shelled and fired upon, we managed to deliver 250 food parcels, 190 hygiene kits and chronic diseases medicines," the Red Crescent said in a statement.
An unverifiable video, promoted by activists, shows UN vehicles trapped and under bombardment in the dark, as a wounded man is stretchered away.
Both sides blame each other for the renewed violence, but the BBC correspondent in Lebanon, Jim Muir, says that unless the videos have somehow been faked, the UN and other vehicles appear to be inside the rebel-held quarter and being fired on from outside.
Homs has been a key battleground in the uprising against President Assad.
The army launched a series of big attacks to recapture rebel areas in the Old City in the beginning of 2012, with almost daily bombardments.
Thousands have been killed, large areas have been reduced to rubble, and many neighbourhoods lie in ruins.
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