27 December 2011 Last updated at 04:18 ET

Homs: 'Capital of the Syrian revolution'

Homs has become a focus of anti-Assad protests

The restive western Syrian city of Homs has become a focal point for protests against President Bashar al-Assad - and it is also one of the areas hardest hit by the state's bloody crackdown.

Homs - for many the capital of the Syrian Revolution - was one of the first cities to join the uprisings against the government, and in April 2011 saw its brutality first-hand when crowds protesting in its Clock Tower Square were fired on, reportedly leaving at least 50 dead and others wounded.

Protests against the government have continued there, despite equally unrelenting attacks by security forces.

Witnesses quoted by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said hundreds of armoured vehicles arrived in the city in early December.

Reports in the Saudi-funded newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat say that the Assad government has threatened to storm the city if army defectors are not handed over.

Rallying point

"[Homs] is one place where the people just don't give up, it has become so symbolic," says Rime Allaf, a Syria expert and associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House.

"That night back in April was a turning point in the Homs saga. People came with tents and sandwiches, prepared to face tear gas, and they were cut down with bullets."

That incident in Clock Tower Square may have provided a rallying point for those in Homs protesting for democracy in Syria, but a number of other factors sustained the protests throughout the summer and autumn.

Firstly, significant numbers of soldiers defecting from the Syrian army have made Homs a base.

Defectors drawn to what was then a liberated city effectively enabled protests to take place. Armed and able to shoot back, they provided security and a perimeter for demonstrations.

The geography of Syria's third-largest city, a sprawling centre of agriculture and industry that is home to about 1.5 million people, is also said to have been problematic for the Syrian security forces.

"It is such an extended city, with extensive suburbs, villages and surrounding areas taking part [in protests] that it has been hard for the Syrian army to subdue all of that territory, as well as everywhere else," says Rime Allaf.

The unique character of the city's inhabitants and the area's strong local identity has also been cited as a explanation for Homs's resilience.

Peter Harling, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon Project Director at the International Crisis Group, says: "People from Homs are renowned for their sense of humour and this has come out so strongly in the crisis - even in the teeth of this massive onslaught by the regime.

"Many Syrians have been shocked by what they describe as the savagery of the regime and protesters in Homs have been successful at displaying a sense of civilisation which belies the regime's narrative of a thuggish underclass.

"Unlike its surrounding countryside, Homs has by and large resisted sectarian dynamics, maintained a measure of social cohesion, challenged the regime through its strong local identity and provided a source of inspiration to many regime critics.

"That is why Homs has been the capital that Damascus has not."

'Urban battlefield'

The protests in Syria first centred on southern Deraa, an agricultural hub once considered a government stronghold.

They later spread to Latakia in the north, birthplace of former President Hafez al-Assad, and the Mediterranean coastal town of Baniyas, which has a strong conservative Sunni Muslim constituency.

It was then that the protests moved west to Homs, and to west-central Hama, the site of a brutally suppressed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982.

When a BBC undercover team recently visited Homs, they saw checkpoints everywhere and heard gunfire frequently.

The BBC's Paul Wood was smuggled into Homs were he met military defectors

The BBC team met fighters from the Free Syria Army who hoped to lessen the authorities' stranglehold on the city.

The authorities say the security forces - with tanks and artillery - are fighting militant gangs who have been killing civilians in Homs. Opponents dispute this and because of reporting restrictions imposed by Syria it is hard to verify exactly what is going on at street level.

But activists and residents quoted in the New York Times say a portion of those army defectors in Homs have begun carrying out regular attacks on the security services.

Peter Harling says the situation in parts of Homs now resembles "an urban battlefield" - and in the countryside surrounding Homs, there has been a worrying upsurge in sectarian violence that could lay the groundwork for "civil war".

Where the "deployment of security services, often behaving in a deeply sectarian fashion themselves, has had the effect of cutting the social ties between the towns and villages in the area around Homs", there is greater potential for sectarian conflict, he says.

"This is not what the regime appears most concerned about," he says. But Homs is.