Syrian forces have stormed one of the country's flash point cities, Homs, a day after at least 34 people were killed in earlier attacks, as President Bashar Assad ignored calls by Barack Obama and European leaders to end the violence and resign.

Residents of Homs described a "terrible" night, with shooting echoing through empty streets and tanks again on the outskirts of town, the Guardian reported.

One Homs resident told the Guardian that shooting had been heard inside a hospital and a prison in the early hours of Saturday. Residents fear a full-scale assault on the city.

A U.N. humanitarian team arrived in Syria over the weekend to examine the effects of President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown against anti-government protesters, CNN reported.

The team is meeting with humanitarian and government officials to assess the months-long pro-democracy protests in which unarmed opposition protesters have been repeatedly fired on and to investigate counter-claims by the government of armed gangs terrorizing residents.

"There will be a series of meetings with U.N. country team members and partners," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the Geneva-based United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told CNN Sunday.

Byrs said she did not have details about whether the team would meet with al-Assad or whether it would tour the hard-hit cities of Homs, Hama, Latakia and others where opposition organizers have reported scores of new deaths weekly at the hand of Syrian security forces.

A Guardian poll published on Saturday revealed that 82.4% of respondents supported some sort of military intervention in Syria.

A state-owned Syrian newspaper described the calls by the US president, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and British prime minister, David Cameron – as the "face of the conspiracy."

Meanwhile, opponents of Assad met in Turkey to launch a "national council," Al Jazeera reported.

Participants in two days of meetings in an Istanbul hotel, from both inside and outside Syria, planned to set up working groups and draft measures aimed at ousting Assad, organizers said.

"The Syrian national council will have between 115 and 150 members, more than half of whom are in Syria, with the remainder in exile," dissident Obeida al-Nahhas told AFP.