Burnt houses, collapsed buildings and rubble line streets strewn with broken glass and spent shells in Homs' devastated neighborhoods, for months the front line in the revolution against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On a 10-minute drive through Baba Amr district on Thursday, as journalists accompanied United Nations truce observers, two elderly women were the only people to be seen. Buildings along the main street and nearby alleys were destroyed in the bombardment by the army.

Homs, Syria's third largest city, is an important industrial center straddling the main north-south highway, near the border with Lebanon. The city and surrounding province have borne the heaviest loss of life in the 14-month-old uprising against Assad and tens of thousands of people have been displaced.

In Inshaat neighborhood a woman said she had returned to the area last week with her family because they could not rely indefinitely on others to look after them.

"What else can we do? The destruction is huge but we cannot continue living in other people's houses," she said.

A soldier at a nearby checkpoint, brought in from the eastern city of Deir al-Zor to help the crackdown on the revolution, said he was taken aback when he arrived in Homs a month ago.

"I was surprised to see all this destruction. I felt bad for the country and my people," he said. "But this is all because of the gunmen," he said, echoing the government accusation that the uprising is a “foreign-backed militant campaign”.

"Your revolution is my arse" said less sympathetic graffiti scrawled on one of the walls. In Baba Amr, taunts on the walls in the opposition district praised the president - "We love you Bashar", "Assad for ever" and "We sacrifice ourselves for you".

Flowers to mortars

Like other troubled cities in Syria, Homs has areas of calm. Majority Sunni Muslims, who make up most of the protesters and the overwhelming majority of the revolution, say the districts which house Alawites - from the same sect as Assad's family - have enjoyed army protection while the rest of the city is bombarded.

In Hamra district, home to the governor's residence, houses were untouched and trees and flowers line the streets.

But in Khalidiya, where revolution fighters were still fighting Assad's forces, constant gunfire could be heard, as well as mortars and blasts which residents said were tank fire.

Everything from burnt out shopping malls to the damage to the main Khalid ibn al-Walid mosque spoke of violence in Homs, and even as journalists waited for U.N. monitors to finish talks with opposition representatives, the body of a person killed in the province was brought for burial, wrapped in a bloodied blanket.

Abdulrazzaq Tlas, leader of a main revolution Farouq Brigade, helped bring in the body and conduct the funeral.

The presence of the monitors, who are supposed to be overseeing a ceasefire leading to talks and a political solution to Syria's crisis, did little to reassure people in Khalidiya, many of whom appeared to be revolution fighters.

"The people of Homs don't expect much, even from the monitors. Now they are talking about dialogue - who said we want dialogue," said 24-year-old Ghanem. "We went to the street to topple Bashar al-Assad, not to talk to him."

Others spoke angrily of lost homes and lost relatives.

Sixty-two-year-old Mohammad Ezzedine said the army burnt down his house in the Homs district of Bayada, forcing his family to head for Damascus, leave the country, or move to another area of Homs. "Who's going to compensate me, and how do you bring back the dead?" he said.

Mahmoud, 12, said many families were crammed into small quarters. "In my house we are nine people living in my house, and our house is very tiny."

"There is no food and no clean water, nothing. There is no shop open and we only have one meal a day. Look around you - how can we live like that and survive?"

PHOTO CAPTION

Damaged buildings are seen in Homs April 24, 2012. Picture taken April 24, 2012.

Source: Reuters