clipped from article:

MAFRAQ, Jordan (AP) — Every day, rockets and mortars fired by regime forces rattle the streets of Homs. Armed rebels ambush government military checkpoints. Hatreds brew on either side of the avenues that divide the bloodstained Syrian city.

Homs has become the focus of the worst violence of the 11-month-old uprising, which appears to be morphing into a civil war with fearsome sectarian overtones. Syria's third-largest city has become the major center of both resistance and reprisal, fueled in part by increasingly bold army defectors who want to bring down President Bashar Assad's autocratic regime by force. [read more at link]