Syrian government troops launch offensives with tanks on Hama an other cities in country 1502121.

Tanks deployed near the citadel of Hama were shelling the neighborhoods of Faraya, Olailat, Bashoura and al-Hamidiya, and troops were advancing from the airport, opposition sources said.

An activist called Amer, speaking briefly by satellite phone, said that "landlines and mobile phone networks have been cut in the whole of Hama," a Sunni city notorious for the massacre of some 10,000 people when the present president's father Hafez sent in troops to crush an uprising there in 1982.

Activists said no casualty reports were available from Hama, Syria's fourth largest city, because of communications problems.

Assad's determination to crush the revolt, regardless of widespread condemnation of his use of force against civilians, prompted Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia to prepare a new resolution at the United Nations in support of a peace plan forged at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday.

The threat of military support was meant to add pressure on the Syrian leader and his Russian and Chinese allies but it also risks leading to a Libya-style conflict or sectarian civil war.

Smuggled guns are already reaching Syria but it is not clear if Arab or other governments are behind the deliveries. Weapons and Sunni Muslim insurgents are also crossing into Syria from Iraq, Iraqi officials and arms dealers said.