Distraught observers

Syrian troops bombed homes in the central city of Homs for the fifth straight day on Wednesday, killing at least 67 people as President Bashar Assad's regime becomes increasingly isolated over its crackdown on public dissent.

Ambassadors from five European and six Arab Gulf countries are among the most recent people to leave Syria, but some 7,000 people have already left the country's cities and villages to live in refugee camps along the border with Turkey.

Wasim Sabbagh, who lived in Homs before fleeing fighting there, said news of the crackdown on his hometown traveled fast. Within minutes, he said, the shock wave reached the camp, a hundred miles away from Homs.

"It was 2 a.m., we were watching news," he told Deutsche Welle. "We were walking all around the camp, waking people up: Get up, wake up, and see what's going on there! Some people wanted to do something right away."

Feelings of impotence

Sabbagh said some men in the camp wanted to give blood and send it to hospitals in Homs but there was no way to get the blood over the border.

Instead, some refugees marched three miles (4.8 kilometers) to another camp where officers from the Free Syrian Army had been staying. About a hundred men arrived at the camp in the middle of the night, hoping the officers would know what to do. But the officers told them they had no answers.

"They said, 'We can't do anything because nobody is supporting us yet. Many countries have promised us, but we got nothing,'" Sabbagh remembered.

Losing faith

After watching the television reports on the violence in Homs as well as the vetoes by China and Russia in the United Nations Security Council, refugees said they had given up hope that the international community would come to their aid.

"We came to the point of loosing trust in everything," said Mahmoud, a school teacher who fled to the camp, told Deutsche Welle. "We lost trust in the Arab League. We lost trust with the UN. We lost trust with the National Syrian Council. We lost trust with the commanders with the Free Syrian Army. We have to trust with ourselves now. We know now that it's the only solution."

The double veto of the UN Security Council resolution, which had sought Assad's resignation and was backed by the Arab League, represented a tipping point for many refugees, lawyer Ghazwan Haj-Issa said.

"The job of the Security Council is to protect the people around the world, but now they support killing. No one in the world can stop killing in Syria," Haj-Issa said.

"If we carry weapons and fight, we know that the regime will use more force and will kill more. If we leave the regime as it is now, the killing continues," he added.

Fading options

But after spending months stranded on the Turkish side of the border, some in the camp said they it was time for them to Syria.

"We reached to a point that we have to do something," a man who gave his name only as Raed said. "About 1,000 young men decided to go back without weapons - without anything - just to be in Syria with the people."

Many in the camp said they are torn between peaceful protests - sit-ins and Facebook groups to raise awareness of the suffering in Syria - and sneaking back into Syria to support the armed rebellion.

Hassan, a young man who just got married at the camp, said peaceful protests only made sense if the international community is willing to step in.

"If it the world is not with us, then fighting is the only way left," he said.

Author: Marine Olivesi, at the Turkish-Syrian border / sms
Editor: Holly Fox