CAIRO: The Arab League said it agreed Sunday to open contacts with Syria’s opposition and to ask the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force to the unrest-swept nation in moves swiftly rejected by Syria.Arab diplomats “will open channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and offer full political and financial support, urging [the opposition] to unify its ranks,” the League said in a statement obtained by AFP.

They would also “ask the U.N. Security Council to issue a decision on the formation of a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force to oversee the implementation of a cease-fire,” it said.

After marathon talks in Cairo, the 22-member bloc also announced it had formally ended its own observer mission to Syria, which was suspended last month because of an upsurge in violence.

Only Algeria and Lebanon expressed reservations against the resolution, an Arab League official said. Syria’s ambassador to Cairo “categorically” rejected the Arab League moves.

“The Syrian Arab Republic categorically rejects the decisions of the Arab League,” which “reflects the hysteria of these governments” after failing to get foreign intervention at the U.N. Security Council, Youssef Ahmad said in a statement.

Earlier Sunday, Tunisia said it would host the first meeting on Feb. 24 of a “Friends of Syria” contact group made up of Arab and other states and backed by the West. A similar Libya contact group played a vital role in coordinating Western and Arab aid to that country’s rebels last year.

On the ground, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 14 people were killed in a relentless assault by forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad on the central protest city of Homs.

All but one of them died in Bab Amro, a rebel stronghold in the city which armed forces have targeted for more than a week, killing at least 500 people, according to activists.

It also reported fierce clashes on the northern edge of nearby Rastan, where a woman was killed when a rocket hit her home. Elsewhere, snipers shot dead a child in Deraa, cradle of the 11-month uprising against Assad’s regime.

“Tank and mortar fire intensified Sunday afternoon,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel-Rahman told AFP, adding the humanitarian situation was worsening. “There is a shortage of bread in some areas.”

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network on the ground, provided a link to a YouTube video showing crowds gathered outside the only bakery in one part of Homs.

As the military pressed its onslaught on Homs, refugees who fled to Lebanon from the flashpoint city recounted the horrors they had witnessed.

“The army of Bashar Assad destroyed our homes,” one of them, Abu Ibrahim, told AFP. “Before, we were bombarded by mortars or rocket-propelled grenades, but now they are using tanks and helicopters.”

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and International Committee of the Red Cross said their “volunteers are distributing food, medical supplies, blankets and hygiene consumables to thousands of people” in Homs.

“We are greatly concerned about the consequences of the unrest from a humanitarian viewpoint and about the current deterioration of the situation,” said the ICRC’s Marianne Gasser. “The population, particularly the wounded and sick, are bearing the brunt of the violence,” she said in the statement.

Aid workers were also helping thousands of people who had fled to Bludan after fleeing from Zabadani, 50 km northwest of Damascus, the Red Crescent said.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon had broached the idea of a joint Arab-U.N. mission this month as he bemoaned the Security Council’s failure to agree on a resolution on the crisis in the face of Chinese and Russian opposition.

The pan-Arab bloc has already put forward a plan for Assad to transfer power to his deputy and for a government of national unity to be formed ahead of elections.

On Sunday, Syrian government newspaper Al-Thawra charged that Arab nations were in the pay of Western powers. “There will probably be no surprises because the orders have already been sent. They do not decide anything; they just carry out orders. They have done that in the past and they will do it today,” it said of the Cairo meetings.

State TV aired live footage Sunday of an official funeral for the 28 people authorities say were killed in twin car bombs in the northern city of Aleppo Friday.

The authorities blamed “terrorists” for the attacks, but the rebel Free Syrian Army accused the regime of launching them “to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs, Zabadani and elsewhere.”

A U.S. media report citing unnamed American officials said Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch was likely to have carried out the Aleppo bombings, along with attacks in Damascus in December and January.

Iraq’s deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi told AFP that Baghdad has “intelligence information that a number of Iraqi jihadists went to Syria” and that “weapons smuggling is still ongoing.”

And Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri voiced his support for Syria’s uprising in a new video posted on jihadist Internet forums, U.S. monitors SITE Intelligence said.