Aerial photos show the destruction that fighting has wreaked on a district of Homs city as Syrian government troops take control.
All photos: AFP/Ho/Shaam News Network The neighbourhood of Khalidiya had been a rebel stronghold since the start of the two-year-old conflict but has now been seized by forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad.
The images released by the opposition and which cannot be independently verified show buildings reduced to mere shells after intense clashes between the two sides.
The scene appears to be a bleak and lifeless wasteland.
Footage claiming to show ongoing battles in Khalidiya has also emerged.
The video uploaded online and purporting to be from the area, shows shelling across the skyline of the city which appears to hit the minaret of a local mosque.
Smoke from heavy fighting can be seen in another video as loud explosions shake the camera.
The regime's capture of the district is a setback for the rebels in the strategic central heartland, bringing President Assad's forces closer to their goal of capturing all of Syria's third largest city.
Government troops had launched a sweeping offensive to retake rebel-held areas of Homs a month ago.
In early June, regime forces captured the strategic town of Qusair in Homs province near the border with Lebanon. Troops have also taken Talkalakh, another border town in the province.
The province of Homs is Syria's largest, running from the Lebanese frontier in the west all the way to the border with Iraq and Jordan in the east.
The city holds strategic value because it serves as a crossroads: it is on the main highway from Damascus in the south to the north of the country as well as to the coastal region, which is a stronghold of President Assad's Alawite sect.
Meanwhile, at least 10 people have been killed in a mortar attack on a government-held district in Homs city, an official and opposition activists said.
Around 26 others were wounded after three mortar rounds hit the neighbourhood of Dablan before dawn.
Many living in the area had fled there to escape fighting elsewhere in the city.
Elsewhere, at least 12 rebel fighters were killed as they were taking flour from a mill on the eastern outskirts of the capital Damascus, according to opposition activists.
The rebels had only just captured the mill on the Damascus Airport road following a battle that lasted several hours, in the hope they could relieve a food shortage caused by a siege of the area by loyalist forces for the last two months.
In the northern city of Aleppo, several rebel factions including the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra, or Nusra Front, reportedly attacked army posts in two neighbourhoods in an offensive titled "amputating infidels".
Rebels apparently captured the district of Dahret Abed Rabbo and several buildings in Lairamoun there, and eight government soldiers were killed.
One hundred thousand people have been killed in Syria's two year conflict, which started with peaceful protests against Mr Assad's rule in March 2011.
Homs has strategic value Nearly two million refugees have fled the war, which has become an increasingly sectarian conflict between the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and supporters of Mr Assad.
Complicating the conflict has been the increasing involvement of foreign fighters from neighbouring countries and even, in small numbers, from the West.
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