BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters Friday as thousands rallied across the country to call for the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime, activists said. Troops also clashed with armed anti-regime forces in central regions.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one person was killed in the central city of Hama and at least seven people were wounded in another central area, Homs.
In this citizen journalism image made on a mobile phone and provided by Shaam News Network, Anti-Syrian President Bashar Assad protesters, shout slogans as they protest at al-kessour area, in Homs province, Syria, late Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011. Angry supporters of President Bashar Assad's regime hurled tomatoes and eggs at the U.S. ambassador to Syria as he entered the office of a leading opposition figure and then tried to break into the building, trapping him inside for three hours. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS HANDOUT PHOTO
The protests spread from the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs to the southern province of Daraa, the northwestern province of Idlib as well as Hama and Homs.
Many of the protesters expressed solidarity with residents of the rebellious town of Rastan just north of Homs, where fighting has been raging for three days between troops and army defectors.
Amateur videos posted online by activists showed thousands of people shouting in support of the rebellion in Rastan, where fighting continued Friday.
"Rastan will overthrow the regime," read one banner waved by protesters in the Damascus neighborhood of Qadam. Many of the protesters there covered their faces with scarves or masks to hide their identities.
The Syrian government has banned foreign journalists and placed heavy restrictions on local media coverage, making it difficult to independently verify events on the ground.
The U.N. says some 2,700 people have already died in the government crackdown against the uprising that began in mid-March.
The protests on Friday followed the week's main Muslim prayer services and were similar to demonstrations held across Syria every Friday for the past six months since the uprising against Assad erupted in the country's south.
A military official said Friday that two days of clashes between Syrian troops and anti-Assad forces in Rastan killed seven soldiers and policemen.
The official said 32 Syrian troops were also wounded in the fighting as government forces conducted a "qualitative" operation on Thursday and Friday in an effort to crush "gunmen" holed up inside the town.
The government describes its armed opponents there as "terrorist armed groups," not army defectors.
The official said the gunmen had terrorized citizens, blocked roads and set up barriers and explosives, and were responsible for the deaths of the seven troops. The comments by the unidentified official were carried by state-run news agency, SANA, on Friday.
Rastan has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting in the six-month uprising against Assad, pitting the military against hundreds of army defectors, according to activists.
The town, from which the Syrian army draws many of its Sunni Muslim recruits, has seen some of the largest numbers of defections to date. A prominent human rights activist estimated there were around 2,000 defectors fighting in Rastan and nearby Talbiseh as well as in the Jabal al-Zawiyah region in the northern Idlib province.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The defectors, as well as reports that once-peaceful Syrian protesters are increasingly taking up arms to fight the six-month old government crackdown, have raised concerns of the risk of civil war in Syria.
Syria has a volatile sectarian divide, making civil unrest one of the most dire scenarios. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
The report carried by SANA Friday was an acknowledgment of the stiff resistance and ongoing clashes in Rastan.
The military official said the confrontation resulted in the killing and detention of many of the gunmen. He said Syrian troops were still pursuing members of the terrorist groups in an effort to restore security to Rastan.
Here is a video of Syrian regime police & army officers attacking & kicking arrested peaceful protesters. An officer in the video says: "This kick is for your freedom request. & this kick is for Alshaheed (Martyr)". The officers then gather to stand on top of arrested protesters to take a photo shot!
BEIRUT (AP) — Residents of the southern Syrian city of Daraa braved sniper fire Tuesday to pull the bullet-riddled bodies of the dead from the streets and hide them from security forces, a day after a brutal government crackdown on the popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, witnesses said.
As heavy gunfire reverberated through Daraa, a Syrian human rights group said authorities detained dozens of people across the country, mainly in several Damascus suburbs, including the town of Douma and in the northern coastal city of Jableh.
This video image taken from amateur video released by Sham News Network, a Syrian Freedom group, shows a man throwing an object at a tank in Daraa, Syria Sunday April 24, 2011. An eyewitness says at least five people have been killed in the southern Syrian city of Daraa during a security crackdown. Syrian troops in armored vehicles and tanks stormed the southern town of Daraa early Monday April 25, 2011 and opened fire. It was the latest bloodshed in a five-week uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime. (AP Photo/Sham News Network via APTN) AP HAS NO WAY OF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFYING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THIS VIDEO
A relentless crackdown since mid-March has killed more than 400 people across Syria, with 120 dead over the weekend, rights groups said. That has only emboldened protesters who started their revolt with calls for modest reforms but are now increasingly demanding Assad's downfall.
The Syrian army, backed by tanks and snipers, launched a deadly raid before dawn Monday on Daraa, where the uprising began more than a month ago, and on the towns of Douma and Jableh. At least 22 people were killed in Daraa.
World leaders expressed concern at the mounting bloodshed, with the United States starting to draw up sanctions against Assad, diplomats hoping to send a strong signal to Damascus from the United Nations, and the prime minister of neighboring Turkey telephoning the Syrian leader to urge restraint.
The assault on Daraa appeared to be part of new strategy of crippling, pre-emptive action against any opposition to Assad, rather than reacting to demonstrations.
It took more than a day for residents of Daraa to start pulling many of the bodies off the streets of Daraa, with rooftop snipers and army forces firing on people who dared to leave their homes. One man, Zaher Ahmad Ayyash, was killed as he tried to retrieve the bodies of two brothers, Taysir and Yaser al-Akrad, said a resident, who asked to be identified only as Abdullah for fear of reprisal.
The corpses were hidden away after they were retrieved from the streets, Abdullah said, suggesting that residents might face reprisal if troops discovered they had taken the bodies. As he spoke on the phone, gunfire popping in the background.
"We can't bury the dead in the cemetery because it's occupied by Syrian soldiers," said Abdullah. "We are waiting to find another place to bury them."
Snipers also targeted water tanks on rooftops in Daraa — the last source of clean water for many desperate residents of the parched region of 300,000 people, Abdullah said.
Even as the military crackdown intensified, Abdullah said there was quiet, defiant resistance. He said some soldiers were disobeying orders and allowing residents to pass through military checkpoints.
Palestinian refugees — generally the most hardscrabble of all Syrian residents — smuggled flour, water, bread and canned food into town. "We are so grateful to them," the resident said.
Earlier in the day, another resident said Syrian special forces were in the streets of the impoverished city, and tanks had opened fire in the city.
"We are being subjected to a massacre," another resident screamed over the telephone above the sound of gunfire. "We have been without electricity for three days. We have no water."
The witness, contacted via a Jordanian cell phone, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, as did other witnesses and residents contacted across Syria.
Scenes similar to those in Daraa took place in Jableh, with residents hiding their dead from Friday's assault and then furtively burying them in private plots of farmland — some as late as Tuesday — out of fear that the families of those killed might be arrested, a resident said. Also like Daraa, gunmen had shot holes in water storage tanks on rooftops in a form of punishment, he added.
In a continuation of the crackdown, hundreds of people were arrested Tuesday, he said.
Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots since the uprising began, making it almost impossible to verify the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian, anti-Western regimes in the Arab world.
In Douma, which saw an intense crackdown Monday, houses were raided again at dawn Tuesday, with forces detaining anyone suspected of participating in demonstrations. Soldiers at sandbagged checkpoints also held men deemed suspicious. Phone service was cut off, a resident said.
The streets of Douma were almost empty, with schools and most shops closed and uncollected garbage piling up. Security was heavy, with agents at checkpoints asking people for their identity cards.
Another resident said authorities closed the private Hamdan Hospital after ordering all families of patients there to take them home. No reason was given for the closure, and three doctors there were detained, the resident said.
In the seaside city of Banias, divided between Sunni Muslims and Alawites — the sect of the ruling Assad family and many key officials — thousands of men and women gathered in the streets for a demonstration, according to three residents. With the noise of chanting in the background, they said they wanted to show support for Daraa.
Life was almost back to normal in the central city of Homs, except for intense security, a witness said. A few hundred people demonstrated there Monday in support of Daraa, the witness said
Daraa has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the past five weeks as the uprising gained momentum. Recently, the city has absorbed many rural migrants who can no longer farm after years of drought.
The White House has stepped up its condemnation of Assad's regime, but stopped well short of demanding his ouster. U.S. officials said Washington has begun drawing up targeted sanctions against him, his family and his inner circle to boost pressure on them to halt the repression.
Washington was conferring with European countries and the United Nations about options.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain also was working with other members of the U.N. Security Council "to send a strong signal to the Syrian authorities that the eyes of the international community are on Syria." The U.N. will discuss Syria later Tuesday.
In Rome, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed concern over the crackdown. Sarkozy said the current situation was "unacceptable."
The United States told all its nonessential staff and the families of all its embassy workers to leave the country, but kept the facility open for limited services. It also advised all Americans to defer travel to Syria and advised those already in the country to leave. On Sunday, Britain urged its citizens to leave Syria.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Assad and urged him to show "restraint." Turkey's ambassador met Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar to express "deep concern and sorrow" over the many lives lost, the prime minister's office and the Turkish media reported.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, who provided the death toll of more than 400 people since the uprising began last month, said that figure did not include those killed in the raids on Daraa and the Damascus suburb of Douma. It also did not include the number of Syrian troops killed, he added.
Abdul-Rahman couldn't provide a precise figure for those arrested Tuesday because it was difficult to get through to Daraa after authorities cut telephone service in the city 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Damascus, near the Jordanian border.
The uprising was touched off by the arrest of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall, with protesters inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
Last week, Assad fulfilled a key demand by abolishing nearly 50-year-old emergency laws that had given the regime a free hand to arrest people without cause. But he coupled the concession with a stern warning that people would no longer have an excuse to hold mass protests, and any further unrest would be considered "sabotage."
When protesters defied his order and held demonstrations Friday — the main day for rallies around the Arab world — they were met with a gunfire, tear gas and stun guns.
The attack on Daraa was by far the biggest in scope and firepower. Video purportedly shot by activists showed tanks rolling through streets and grassy fields with soldiers on foot jogging behind them.
State-run television quoted a military source as saying army units entered the city to bring security "answering the pleas for help by residents of Daraa."
Syria has a pivotal role in most of the flashpoint issues of the Middle East — from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran's widening influence. Instability has thrown into disarray the U.S. push for engagement with Damascus, part of Washington's hopes to peel the country away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's Cabinet resigned Tuesday to help quell a wave of popular fury that erupted more than a week ago, threatening President Bashar Assad's 11-year rule in one of the most authoritarian nations in the Middle East.
Assad, whose family has controlled Syria for four decades, is trying to calm the growing dissent with a string of overtures. He is expected to address the nation in the next 24 hours to lift emergency laws in place since 1963 and moving to annul other harsh restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms.
Mass protests exploded nationwide on Friday, touched off by the arrest of several teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa. Security forces launched a swift crackdown, opening fire in at least six locations around the country — including the capital, Damascus, and the country's main port of Latakia.
Pro-Syrian President Bashar Assad supporters gather to demonstrate their support for their president, in Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday March 29, 2011. Pledging allegiance for President Bashar Assad as he faces the biggest challenge to his 11-year rule, hundreds of thousands of Syrians gathered in a central Damascus square Tuesday, waving his pictures and chanting support. (AP Photo/Muzaffar Salman)
More than 60 people have died since March 18 as security forces cracked down on protesters, Human Rights Watch said.
State TV said Tuesday Assad accepted the resignation of the 32-member Cabinet headed by Naji al-Otari, who has been in place since September 2003. The Cabinet will continue running the country's affairs until the formation of a new government.
The resignations will not affect Assad, who holds the lion's share of power in the authoritarian regime.
The announcement came hours after hundreds of thousands of supporters of Syria's hard-line regime poured into the streets Tuesday as the government tried to show it has mass support.
"The people want Bashar Assad!" chanted protesters in a central Damascus square. Men, women and children gathered in front of a huge picture of Assad freshly put up on the Central Bank building.
The anti-government protests and ensuing violence have brought sectarian tensions in Syria out in the open for the first time in decades, a taboo topic here because the country has a Sunni majority ruled by minority Alawites, a branch of Shiite Islam. Assad has placed his fellow Alawites into most positions of power in Syria.
But he also has used increased economic freedom and prosperity to win the allegiance of the prosperous Sunni Muslim merchant classes, while punishing dissenters with arrest, imprisonment and physical abuse.
Many of the pro-regime demonstrators emphasized national unity Tuesday.
"Sectarianism was never an issue before, this is a conspiracy targeting Syria," said Jinane Adra, a 36-year-old Syrian who came from Saudi Arabia to express support for Assad.
"The Syrian people are one, there is no place for religious divisions between us," she said, flanked by her children, ages 3 and 5, carrying red roses and pictures of Assad.
Mohammed Ali, 40, said Assad was in touch with the Syrian people and aware of their need for reforms.
"This dirty conspiracy will be short-lived, we are all behind him," he said, cradling an Assad poster on his chest.
The unrest in the strategically important country could have implications well beyond the country's borders given its role as Iran's top Arab ally and as a front line state against Israel.
Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a potentially destabilizing force in the Mideast. An ally of Iran and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, it has also provided a home for some radical Palestinian groups.
But the country has been trying to emerge from years of international isolation. The U.S. recently has reached out to Syria in the hopes of drawing it away from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas — although the effort has not yielded much.
The government-sanctioned rallies Tuesday dubbed "loyalty to the nation march" brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Hasakeh in the north and the central cities of Hama and Homs. School children were given the day off and bank employees and other workers were given two hours off to attend the demonstrations.
Still, many in Syria who see Assad as a young, dynamic leader and credit him for opening up the economy were shocked by the violence and came to express genuine support.
When unrest roiling the Middle East hit Syria, it was a dramatic turn for Assad, a British-trained eye doctor who inherited power from his father in 2000 after three decades of iron-fisted rule. In January, he said his country is immune to such unrest because he is in tune with his people's needs.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrians rallied Sunday for a third consecutive day in a tense southern city where security forces killed at least five protesters, signaling that unrest in yet another Arab country is taking root, a witness and activists said.
The witness in Daraa told The Associated Press by telephone that protesters were angry about the shooting Friday and mass arrests after the demonstrations calling for political freedoms in one of the region's most repressive countries. They demanded officials involved in the violence be fired.
An activist in Damascus who is in close contact with Daraa residents said protesters were particularly incensed at a delegation from President Bashar Assad that came to offer condolences to the families of the dead. Another Damascus activist said police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, killing one person. He said more than 200 people suffered from gas inhalation and were treated at a nearby mosque that has been transformed into a field hospital.
Neither the witnesses nor the activists would allow their names to be used, for fear of government retaliation. Their accounts could not be immediately confirmed. Syria keeps a tight lid on information, particularly when it comes to security issues.
Syria's government appeared to try to calm the situation later. An official promised to free 70 people held after the deadly protests Friday as well as the teenagers whose detention after scrawling anti-government graffiti touched off the unrest.
The Syrian official said an investigative committee recommended firing several government and security officials in Daraa, accusing them of mishandling Friday's protests.
The Damascus activist said thousands of protesters called for an end to emergency laws, in place since the ruling Baath Party took power in 1963.
Syrian police sealed off Daraa after Friday's demonstrations, allowing residents to leave the city — but not to enter.
The National Organization for Human Rights said authorities randomly arrested people who participated in Friday's protests in at least five cities, including the coastal town of Banyas, Homs and the capital Damascus.
Ammar Qurabi, who heads the rights group, said those arrested were charged with writing anti-government slogans.
A Syrian official acknowledged only two deaths in Friday's violence and said that authorities would bring those responsible to trial. The official said that even if an investigation shows security officers were guilty, they will be put on trial "no matter how high their rank is."
The violence was the worst since 2004 when clashes that began in the northeastern city of Qamishli between Syrian Kurds and security forces left at least 25 people dead and some 100 injured.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
