Armed forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday bombarded the Jobar residential neighborhood of Homs, where a standoff continued between a Red Cross convoy and the government that has blocked the delivery of food, medical supplies and blankets to the thousands still stranded in the area.

Thousands of civilians from another area overrun by the army have taken refuge in the neighborhood, an opposition activist organization said.

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"In an act of pure revenge, Assad's army has been firing mortar rounds and ... machine guns since this morning at Jobar. We have no immediate reports of casualties because of the difficulty of communications," the Syrian Network for Human Rights said in statement.

Jobar is adjacent to the district of Baba Amr in Homs, from where Free Syrian Army rebels pulled out this week after almost a month of army shelling. Activists reported mass executions by loyalist troops who subsequently entered the area.

The Local Coordination Committees activist network said mortars slammed into Khaldiyeh, Bab Sbaa and Khader districts of the city early Saturday.

Graphic: The siege of Homs

Abu Hassan al-Homsi, a doctor at a makeshift clinic in Khaldiyeh district of Homs, said he treated a dozen wounded.

"This has become routine, the mortars start falling early in the morning," he said. Several homes were damaged from the morning shelling, which he described as steady but intermittent. Most of those he treated were lightly wounded, al-Homsi added.

Aid convoy blocked
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Saturday it was still negotiating with Syrian authorities who have denied its aid convoy access to the shattered Baba Amr district.

An ICRC convoy of seven trucks carrying food and other life-saving relief supplies, joined by Red Crescent ambulances to evacuate the sick and wounded, has been stalled in the city of Homs since arriving there on Friday.

Red Cross convoy prevented from entering former Syrian rebel stronghold

"The ICRC and Syrian Red Crescent are not yet in Baba Amr today (Saturday). We are still in negotiations with authorities in order to enter Baba Amro. It is important that we enter today," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters in Geneva.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger, in a statement issued on Friday after waiting all day for Syrian authorities to grant entry to the team, said the delay was "unacceptable" as civilians had waited for weeks for emergency assistance.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday he had received "grisly reports" Syrian government forces were arbitrarily executing, imprisoning and torturing people in the battle-scarred city of Homs after rebel fighters had fled.

PhotoBlog: The fear of carnage to come

'Terrorist' suicide bombs
Meanwhile, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported Saturday that a suicide bomber killed two people and wounded several others in the southern town of Deraa.

"The terrorist explosion led to the martyrdom of two citizens," the agency said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that at least two people were killed and several others wounded in the explosion.

Syrians flee to northern Lebanon

Syria has seen a string of suicide bombings, the last on Feb. 10, when twin suicide bombs struck security compounds in the government stronghold city of Aleppo, killing 28 people and bringing significant violence for the first time to the city.

The capital Damascus, another stronghold of Assad's, has seen three suicide bombings in the past two months.

The regime has touted the attacks as proof that it is being targeted by "terrorists." The opposition accuses forces loyal to the government of being behind the bombings to tarnish the uprising.

Saturday's bombing in Deraa marked the first time a suicide bombing struck an opposition stronghold. Daraa is the birthplace of the nearly year-old uprising against Assad. The revolt has killed more than 7,500 people, according to most recent U.N. estimates.

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Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 The U.N. Security Council is deploring the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria and calling on authorities there to grant U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos "unhindered access," according to The Associated Press.

A statement -- the first on Syria to be approved by the council in seven months -- is significant because it requires the agreement of all 15 council members, including Russia and China, who last month vetoed two resolutions condemning the Syrian government's bloody crackdown and calling for President Bashar Assad to step down.

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While a U.N. statement is not legally binding on Syria, it does reflect the growing concern of the council about the impact of the year-old conflict on Syria's civilian population.

Syrian rebels retreated Thursday from a neighborhood in Homs that they had held for months, saying they were running out of weapons and humanitarian conditions were catastrophic after almost four weeks of government bombardment.

Graphic: The siege of Homs

Within hours of the rebels' withdrawal, President Bashar Assad's government granted permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs on Friday. Human rights workers have been appealing for access to Baba Amr for weeks.

"The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent received today from the Syrian authorities the green light to enter Baba Amr tomorrow to bring in much-needed assistance including food and medical aid, and to carry out evacuation operations," spokesman Hicham Hassan told The Associated Press.

Earlier, rebels told journalists that a few fighters had remained behind in the shattered quarter to cover the "tactical withdrawal" of their comrades. The withdrawal appeared to be an agreement between the two sides in order to avoid a showdown, the BBC reported.

Syrian forces, which shelled Baba Amr earlier in the day despite world alarm at the plight of civilians trapped there, said they were in full control of the district, the BBC reported.

The head of the Free Syrian Army, Col. Riyad Assad, told the BBC that government troops had moved in and were combing the area. The Free Syrian Army is composed mainly of Syrian soldiers who have defected and volunteer civilians.

Images: The fear of carnage to come

A senior official in the FSA earlier told Reuters that rebels in Baba Amr were fending off more than 7,000 government troops. Opposition forces had promised to step up attacks elsewhere in Syria to try to relieve the pressure.

Reports from the city could not be verified immediately due to tight government restrictions on media operations in Syria.

Also on Thursday, Kuwait's parliament said it would support the rebel Free Syrian Army, and called on the Kuwaiti government to cut ties with Assad.

The parliament, which has limited legislative powers, called for Assad to be prosecuted for crimes against his people.

'Whatever the cost'
The 4th Armored Division, which was leading the assault on Homs, is commanded by Maher Assad, the president's younger brother, who has won a reputation for ruthlessness during the past year of revolt against the government.

A Lebanese official close to Damascus said Assad's government was determined to regain control of Homs, Syria's third city, which straddles the main north-south highway.

"They want to take it, whatever happens, without restraint, whatever the cost," the official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

He said defeat for the rebels in Homs, a city of 1 million people, would leave the opposition without any major stronghold in Syria, easing the crisis for Assad, who remained confident he could survive.

Smugglers take 'path of death' to supply Syria revolt

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told members of Congress on Tuesday that Assad could be considered a war criminal.

The U.N. estimates that more than 7,500 people have been killed since the anti-Assad struggle started in March 2011, when protesters inspired by successful Arab Spring uprisings against dictators in Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets in Syria.

Syria's government said in December that "armed terrorists" had killed more than 2,000 soldiers and police during the unrest.

Journalists escape to Lebanon
On Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said wounded French freelance journalist Edith Bouvier had arrived in Lebanon from Syria along with French photographer William Daniels.

Bouvier's family confirmed the news of her arrival in Lebanon to French TV channel France24.

Sarkozy, in Brussels for a European summit, told reporters that Bouvier would be flown home to France in a government plane. The flight could happen as soon as Thursday evening if doctors agreed, he said.

"Edith Bouvier and William Daniels are safely in Lebanon and will very shortly be under the protection of our embassy in Beirut," he said.

Bouvier's femur was shattered during heavy shelling of Homs's rebel-held Baba Amr district, which killed veteran Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik last week.

Meanwhile, Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa, one of several Western journalists trapped in Baba Amr for a week, crossed to Lebanon on Wednesday, an activist said, following the escape on Tuesday of wounded British photographer Paul Conroy.

Thirteen Syrians were killed while aiding Conroy's escape, the activist group Avaaz said.

The Local Coordination Committees, a human rights monitoring group, said Bouvier had previously refused to leave Baba Amr without the Syrians who were wounded by shelling while attempting to help her escape, and she has called on the French ambassador for help.

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Msnbc.com staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

Updated 10 p.m. ET: GENEVA -- The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is negotiating with Syrian authorities and opposition fighters to broker a cease-fire in some of the most violence-torn areas.

Meantime, activists say Syrian forces opened fire with live ammunition on demonstrators in Damascus overnight, wounding at least four, Reuters reported.

"We are currently discussing several possibilities with all those concerned, and it includes a cessation of fighting in the most affected areas," Red Cross spokeswoman Carla Haddad told The Associated Press.

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She said the talks weren't aimed at resolving entrenched political differences, but to allow the humanitarian agency enough time to deliver aid to civilians hardest hit by the conflict.

"The idea is to be able to facilitate swift access to people in need," Haddad said.

Activists in embattled cities such as Homs say food is running out and doctors lack medicine to treat the wounded.

Violence in capital
Demonstrations and clashes with security forces have hit Damascus in the past week, undermining President Bashar al-Assad's argument that an 11-month uprising has been the work of saboteurs and limited mainly to the provinces.

International diplomacy showed no sign of finding a solution, as Western powers and the Arab League prepared a meeting of "Friends of Syria" Friday to pressure Assad to step down, while Russia and China backed Assad's reform plans, derided by Syria's opposition.

"There were hundreds of demonstrators at the main square of Hajar al-Aswad (neighborhood), and suddenly buses of security police and shabbiha (pro-Assad militia) turned up and started firing into the crowd," activist Abu Abdallah told Reuters by telephone.

He said the four wounded were taken to be treated in homes.

Footage posted on YouTube, purportedly taken before the shooting, showed a crowd marching in Hajar al-Aswad carrying placards in support of the besieged city of Homs and singing "Eyes are shedding tears for the martyrs among Syria's youth."

Earlier, opposition youths unfurled a pre-Assad era national flag over a road bridge at the edge of the capital, YouTube footage showed. That followed a weekend that saw one of the biggest demonstrations yet in the capital as the uprising neared its first anniversary.

‘Cut off from the outside world’
Opposition activists said five people had been killed in government shelling of Homs's Baba Amro district on Monday, adding to a reported death toll of several hundred since the operation began there on February 3.

Activists in the western city of Hama said troops, police and militias had set up dozens of roadblocks, cutting neighborhoods off from each other.

A flood of military reinforcements has been a prelude to previous offensives by Assad's regime, which has tried to use its overwhelming firepower to crush an opposition that has been bolstered by defecting soldiers and hardened by 11 months of street battles.

"Hama is cut off from the outside world. There are no landlines, no mobile phone network and no Internet. House-to-house arrests take place daily and sometimes repeatedly in the same neighborhoods," an opposition statement said.

Rebel fighters have been attacking shabbiha militiamen while avoiding open confrontations with the armored forces that had massed around Hama, a city north of Homs on the Damascus-Aleppo highway.

The government restricts foreign media access in Syria, making it hard to verify the activists' reports independently.

Security forces have killed more than 5,000 people, according to human rights groups, in a campaign to crush the revolt while the Assad government says more than 2,000 soldiers and security agents have been killed.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Crying as she is put on an electronic scale, two-year-old Rajini's naked shriveled frame casts a dark shadow over a rising India, where millions of children have little to eat.

The children are scrawny, listless and sick in this run-down nutrition clinic in central India with its intermittent power supply. If they survive they will grow up shorter, weaker and less smart than their better-fed peers.

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Rajini weighs 5 kg (11 lb), about half of what she should.

"She's as light as a leaf, this can't be good," says her grandmother, Sushila Devi, poking her rib-protruding stomach in the clinic in Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh state.

Almost as shocking as India's high prevalence of child malnutrition is the country's failure to reduce it, despite the economy tripling between 1990 and 2005 to become Asia's third largest and annual per capita income rising to $489 from $96.

1 in 4 children malnourished, global report says

A government-supported survey last month said 42 percent of children under five are underweight - almost double that of sub-Saharan Africa - compared to 43 percent five years ago.

The statistic - which means 3,000 children dying daily due to illnesses related to poor diets - led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit malnutrition was "a national shame" and was putting the health of the nation in jeopardy.

"It is a national shame. Child nutrition is a marker of the many things that are not going right for the poor of India," said Purnima Menon, research fellow on poverty, health and nutrition at the Institute of Food Policy Research Institute.

India's efforts to reduce the number of undernourished kids have been largely hampered by blighting poverty where many cannot afford the amount and types of food they need.

Poor hygiene, low public health spending and little education and awareness have not helped. Age-old customs discriminating against women such as child marriage have also contributed, but are far harder to tackle, say experts.

In addition, shoddy management of food stocks, subsidized carbohydrate-rich food that fuel and fill the poor rather than truly nourishing them and real shortages in its poorest states have worsened the problem.

At the Shivpuri clinic, health worker Rekha Singh Chauhan tends to emaciated young children in a ward with a ganglion of electrical wires running cross its paint-chipped walls.

"We only have a handful to take care of now, but come April, the cases will shoot up," says Chauhan, adding that diseases such as diarrhea and malaria will cause an influx of sick underweight children with the onset of summer.

"The situation becomes bad. Three children are made to share a bed and many have to sleep on the floor."

That picture jars with an India clocking enviable 8-9 percent growth over the last five years that has put money in the pockets of millions of its people and fuelled demand for everything from cars and computers to clothes and fancy homes.

It has also catapulted the country onto the world stage, boosting its claim for a bigger role on forums such as the U.N. Security Council. This month, it moved closer to buying new fighter jets worth a whopping $15 billion.

Yet while the urban middle classes dine in swanky shopping malls where eateries offer everything from sushi to burritos, millions of children are dying due to a lack of food.

Last month's report by the Indian charity Naandi Foundation, the first comprehensive data since a 2005/6 study, said India's "nutrition crisis" is an attributable cause for up to half of all child deaths.

Yet India's public spending on health, estimated at 1.2 percent of its GDP in 2009, is among the lowest in the world.

Remembering India's first woman photojournalist

"This isn't a quick-fix that we're looking at here, it's not a magic bullet," said Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of Save the Children International.

"Not just in India, but in countries around the world, we know that you can't just rely on trickle down. There have to be policies in place, there have got to be political choices that prioritize malnutrition."

In Shivpuri, an impoverished tribal-dominated district in Madhya Pradesh state, that reality is on full display.

The region's malnutrition level for children under five matches the national average, but child mortality rates are worse at 103 deaths per 1,000. The national average is 66 deaths per 1,000, according to U.N. children's agency, Unicef.

Most of the children here are from India's most marginalized and poorest communities, such as tribals and lower castes where literacy is poor and poverty high.

Their mothers are themselves often undernourished, forced into early marriage when they reach puberty, and give birth to underweight babies with weak immune systems.

Illiteracy or lack of awareness takes its toll as well. These mothers do not breastfeed, offering buffalo milk and contaminated water instead and making their children prone to illnesses like diarrhea, which prevents nutrient absorption.

Mostly living on less than $2 a day, these families can hardly afford anything beyond wheat chapatis that are devoid of much-needed protein and other nutrients.

Soapy milk, toxic apples: food safety in India

India's neglect of its young - 48 percent are stunted, 20 percent wasted and 70 percent anemic - will have serious repercussions. The World Bank says malnutrition in the poorest countries slashes around 3 percent from annual economic growth.

In comparison, neighboring China has already achieved its target on malnutrition and under-five child mortality goals as its economic growth has been more broad-based, focusing on health, sanitation and small holder production.

While India has several schemes already running to battle malnutrition, the Indian government is now vaunting a multi-billion-dollar food subsidy program as a possible solution.

But the Food Security Bill, which guarantees cut-price rice and wheat to 63.5 percent of the population may be more a political gimmick, experts worry, than about providing nutritious food to those who need it most.

"The Food Security Bill is a very good development, but it is a food security bill, not a nutrition security bill," said Lawrence Haddad, director of the U.K.-based Institute of Development Studies.

For the children at Shivpuri's nutrition centre, government plans mean little unless they put enough of the right food in their stomachs.

"You see her arms? They are almost the width of my thumb," says Jharna, as she carried her limp, emaciated one-year-old grand-daughter, Sakshi, into the clinic. "She is too weak. She can't even sit by herself."

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Story updated 8:35 a.m. ET:

A senior Pakistani official told NBC News the United States' decision to cut aid to Pakistan would only contribute to the growing sense of anti-Americanism within the population.

He said the cut would deepen the perception within Pakistan that U.S. interests extend so far as its own foreign policy goals and would "strengthen our resolve to formalize and renegotiate our terms of engagement with USA."

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Following the NATO crossborder strike on November 26 that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, military and government officials in Pakistan have called for a reassessment of the relationship with the U.S.

The Army Chief issued new rules of engagement for his ground troops and commanders, granting them "full liberty" to respond with force if ever under attack, without any form of higher clearance.

Story published 5:35 a.m. ET:

ISLAMABAD - The United States has frozen $700 million in aid to Pakistan until it gets assurances that Islamabad is helping fight the spread of homemade bombs, a move likely to further strain ties between the countries.

A Congressional panel halted the payment to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, late on Monday as part of a wider review of defense spending.

Calls are growing in the U.S. to penalize Islamabad for failing to act against militant groups and, at worst, helping them, after the secret U.S. raid on a Pakistan garrison town in which al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

Homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), are among militants' most effective weapons against U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan as they struggle to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

Many are made using ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer smuggled across the border from Pakistan.

The freeze on U.S. aid was agreed as part of a defense bill that is expected to be passed this week.

The U.S. wants "assurances that Pakistan is countering improvised explosive devices in their country that are targeting our coalition forces," Representative Howard McKeon, a House Republican, told reporters.

The U.S. has allocated some $20 billion in security and economic aid to Pakistan since 2001, much of it in the form of reimbursements for assistance in fighting militants.

• Slideshow: Pakistan in turmoil

Although the frozen $700 million is only a small portion of aid to Pakistan, it could presage even greater cuts.

Harm to Pakistan-US relations
Salim Saifullah, chairman of Pakistan's Senate foreign relations committee, warned that relations, which are already at a low point, could worsen further following the decision, by the U.S. House-Senate panel.

"I don't think this is a wise move. It could hurt ties. There should instead be efforts to increase cooperation. I don't see any good coming out of this," Saifullah told Reuters.

There have been many proposals to make U.S. aid to Pakistan conditional on more cooperation in fighting militants such as the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, which Washington believes operates out of Pakistan and battles U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But Pakistan's civilian leaders have in the past warned against aid cuts, saying it would only harden public opinion against the U.S.

Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban and has lost thousands of soldiers since it joined the U.S.-led war in 2001, some of them at the hands of coalition troops.

Islamabad has accused NATO of deliberately killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in an air strike near the Afghan border last month and shut down supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan in anger.

The decision to freeze aid could prompt Pakistan to harden its stance toward Washington.

"I think the Pakistan side will understand the type of signal that is coming, which shows it's not only a question of aid," said former general and security analyst Talat Masood.

"The whole attitude of the U.S. and the relationship will be affected by these measures because they know Pakistan will not be in a position to control the smuggling."

• US meets deadline to vacate Pakistan air base

Two fertilizer factories
U.S. lawmakers said many Afghan bombs are made with fertilizer smuggled by militants across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

"The vast majority of the material used to make improvised explosive devices used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan originates from two fertilizer factories inside Pakistan," Republican Senator John McCain said in the Senate last week.

A Congressional Research Service report in October said the Pakistani factories, owned by one of the country's biggest companies, Pakarab, have been producing over 300,000 metric tons of ammonium nitrate per year since 2004.

The United States has urged Pakistan to regulate the distribution of ammonium nitrate to Afghanistan strictly. So far, Pakistan has only produced draft legislation on the issue.

Pakistan's fragile economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, so cutting down on fertilizer output would hurt the sector.

The provision freezing $700 million in aid was agreed upon by leaders of the armed services committees from both parties in the House and Senate, including McCain. It is part of compromise legislation authorizing U.S. defense programs expected to be approved this week, McKeon said.

The bill would also require the Pentagon to deliver a strategy for improving the effectiveness of U.S. aid to Pakistan, he said.

NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.

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