AMMAN: Syria’s army pounded the rebel city of Homs Wednesday as Turkey sought international action to protect civilians from former ally President Bashar Assad, a move that risks the wrath of Russia and China.

Dozens more were killed during the day, according to the opposition, drawing comparisons with the plight of Benghazi, which triggered Western attacks on Libya last year, and accelerating a global diplomatic showdown whose outcome remains far from clear.

“I’ve seen whole families killed this week,” an activist called Ahmad told Reuters from Homs, the scene of one of the bloodiest government onslaughts in the 11-month-old revolt against Assad. “Now I feel like I’m just waiting to be the next to die,” added the accountant.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters before flying to Washington for talks on Syria that Turkey – which once saw Assad as a valuable ally but now wants him out – could no longer stand and watch, and wanted to host an international meeting to agree ways to end the killing and provide aid.

“It is not enough being an observer,” he said. “It is time now to send a strong message to the Syrian people that we are with them,” he added, while refusing to be drawn on what kind of action Turkey or its allies would be prepared to consider.

Meanwhile, the United States said Wednesday it hoped to meet soon with international partners to consider how to halt violence in Syria and provide humanitarian aid.

“In the coming days we will continue our very active discussions ... to crystallize the international community’s next steps in that effort to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

Syrian army tanks pounded areas of Homs where revolt had flourished, demolishing buildings where people were living, short of water, food and medical supplies and pinned down by sharpshooters on rooftops.

“All the international community should work together to help,” Davutoglu said, “especially those who cannot even go from one street to another in Homs. You have pictures of children running from one house to another house while under artillery attack ... They cannot continue these methods of oppression.”

Russia and China provoked strong condemnation from the United States, European powers and other Arab governments when they vetoed a much less interventionist resolution in the Security Council last week that called on Assad to step down.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had described the Russian and Chinese veto at the U.N. as a “fiasco,” telephoned outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Wednesday and afterward issued a statement repeating that Assad had lost “legitimacy.”

The Kremlin said Medvedev told Erdogan that the search for a solution should continue, including in the Security Council, but that foreign interference was not an option.

Medvedev also spoke with French President Nicolas Sarkozy asking him and other Western countries to avoid “hasty, unilateral moves” toward Syria and said that the position of the international community should be “balanced and objective,” the Kremlin said.

As the diplomatic gears turned, the military offensive in Homs and elsewhere showed no sign of let up. Activists in the city also accused militiamen of slaughtering three families in their homes – the sort of incident that is fueling fears of a descent into more widespread, Iraq-style sectarian killing.

The day’s death toll stood at over 100, according to activists, although these figures cannot not be independently verified.

Speaking by satellite phone from the beleaguered Baba Amro neighborhood, activist Hussein Nader said that the bombardment has lessened on the district by dusk, but that tanks had moved closer to the besieged district, where 30,000 inhabitants have been without water, electricity or telephone lines for days.

He said bombardments had killed 42 civilians Wednesday with many others wounded. “There are neighborhoods on the eastern side of Baba Amro that are disaster zones from heavy shelling apparently designed to open the way for tanks ... Dozens of people are under the rubble with no way to get to them because they are firing at anyone who moves in the street,” he added.

Nader said activists were trying to distribute water in bottles, but that bandages and antiseptics had run out. Asked about resistance in the district, he said the Free Syrian Army was outgunned and that fighters were laying low, awaiting an impending tank infantry onslaught on the district.

The onslaught on Homs has not relented despite a promise to end the bloodshed that the Syrian leader gave to Russia.

A group known as the Syrian Revolution General Commission, in a statement Wednesday afternoon called for outside humanitarian protection.