Syrian troops have battered Homs in some of the heaviest shelling in the central flashpoint city for days, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

"The shelling of the Baba Amr neighbourhood began at dawn and is the most intense in five days," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing activists on the ground.

"Two rockets are falling a minute on average."

Hadi Abdullah, an activist in Homs reached by telephone, said the shelling of Baba Amr was extremely heavy.

"The situation is tragic. There are pregnant women, people with heart problems, diabetics and, foremost, wounded people who we cannot evacuate," he said.

"On Monday evening three activists entered the town by car transporting bread, baby milk and medicine.

"Their car was hit by a rocket. They all burned to death. We told them it was dangerous but they said, 'If we don't help the residents who will?"

The Red Cross says Syrians living in conflict zones are now struggling to find even basic foodstuffs and medical supplies.

Al Jazeera visited one makeshift clinic set up in the lounge room of a house in Hama run by medical students.

The students say that people with bullet wounds are not keen to be treated at main hospitals.

"This man was hit by a sniper gunshot," one student said.

"It penetrated his lungs and fractured his shoulder. There's no way he could go to a hospital. We can't refer any injury we receive to a hospital, simply because security personnel are there and any patient who arrives is arrested immediately."

His patient says there could even be wider repercussions.

"If I'm discovered, I will be arrested, not only me but also my brothers, sisters, and my whole family. For the security people what I'm doing here is a big crime," he said.

Peacekeeping mission

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At the United Nations, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Monday that the Syrian government's assault on Homs has killed at least 300 people since February 4.

But a Syrian government spokesman has told CNN the Assad regime is dealing very softly with the activists.

"We don't want to harm innocent civilians," he said.

He says the government has not fired on civilians and has "absolutely not" used tanks in civilian areas of Homs.

The comments came as the UN General Assembly began debating a new plan put forward by the Arab League to form a joint peacekeeping mission with the UN and deploy it to Syria.

But the Arab League proposal has already drawn a guarded international response.

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin has expressed doubts about the viability of any peacekeeping mission.

"This requires the consent of the receiving country, and of course for a peacekeeping mission you need peace to keep," he said.

"In other words, first you have to agree on some kind of ceasefire."

And for the first time in a while, it seems he has drawn some agreement from the West.

British foreign secretary William Hague is also talking about the need for what he has termed a "credible ceasefire", and that Western nations would be unlikely to join any foreign military force.

"I don't see the way forward in Syria as being Western boots on the ground in any form, including in peacekeeping form," he said.

"I think they would need to come from other countries rather than Western nations. But of course if such a concept can be made viable we would be supporting it in all the usual ways."

Meanwhile, Federal Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has dismissed suggestions Syrian diplomats should be expelled from Australia.

AFP/ABC