15 die as Syrians march demanding Assad’s ouster

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT (AP) — Defy­ing gov­ern­ment guns, thou­sands of Syr­ian pro­test­ers poured down city streets and a main high­way Fri­day to press demands for Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s ouster. Secu­rity forces opened fire, killing at least 15 peo­ple, includ­ing two chil­dren, activists said.

“Our rev­o­lu­tion is strong! Assad has lost legit­i­macy!” a YouTube video showed pro­test­ers chant­ing in Zabadani, a sub­urb of Dam­as­cus, the Syr­ian capital.

Syria’s streets have become the stage for a test of endurance between a 3-month-old pro-democracy move­ment, blood­ied but resilient, and an iron-fisted but embat­tled regime. The lat­est round of protests and killings came as inter­na­tional pres­sure mounted on Assad.

“We will not stand by while the Syr­ian regime uses vio­lent repres­sion to silence its own peo­ple,” British For­eign Sec­re­tary William Hague said after the Euro­pean Union expanded sanc­tions — asset freezes and travel bans — to more mem­bers of the Syr­ian leadership.

The Syr­ian oppo­si­tion says 1,400 peo­ple have been killed as the gov­ern­ment has cracked down on a move­ment demand­ing an end to four decades of Assad fam­ily rule — a pop­u­lar upris­ing renewed each Fri­day after weekly Mus­lim prayers.

Five peo­ple were killed by secu­rity forces’ gun­fire this Fri­day in Barzeh, a Dam­as­cus dis­trict 3 miles (5 kilo­me­ters) from the city cen­ter, said the Local Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tees, which track the protests. But Syr­ian state tele­vi­sion offered another ver­sion, say­ing gun­men, oth­er­wise uniden­ti­fied, had opened fire on secu­rity per­son­nel and civil­ians, killing three civil­ians and wound­ing sev­eral secu­rity force members.

Five other fatal­i­ties occurred in al-Kasweh, a sub­urb of the cap­i­tal; four in the cen­tral city of Homs, and one in Hama, also in cen­tral Syria, said the Local Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tees (LCC). Protests in sev­eral other provinces also came under fire but it was not imme­di­ately clear whether there were casu­al­ties, said LCC spokesman Omar Idilbi.

The group said the deaths included a 12-year-old boy, Rateb al-Orabi, killed when secu­rity forces fired on pro­test­ers in the Sham­mas neigh­bor­hood in Homs, and a 13-year old boy in al-Kasweh. The reports could not be inde­pen­dently verified.

In north­ern Syria, activists said at least 15,000 peo­ple staged a protest along the high­way link­ing the country’s two main cities, Dam­as­cus and Aleppo. Thou­sands marched in Amouda and Qamishli in the north­east and in other provinces, said Syria-based human rights activist Mustafa Osso.

Osso and the LCC both reported a few sol­diers defected in al-Kasweh after secu­rity forces shot at pro­test­ers, result­ing in a shootout between loyal sol­diers and defec­tors. Syr­ian TV swiftly denied the mutiny report, say­ing the army wasn’t even inside al-Kasweh Friday.

The report from Osso, which he said came from pro­test­ers and other area res­i­dents, could not be inde­pen­dently verified.

In Hama, activists said, a mas­sive protest took place in the city’s main Assi square. Online footage showed huge num­bers of peo­ple gath­ered, many wav­ing Syr­ian flags and cry­ing for the regime’s down­fall. A large pur­ple ban­ner was unfurled over a build­ing, read­ing: “Long live free Syria, down with Bashar Assad.”

The video and other reports from inside Syria could not oth­er­wise be con­firmed, since the Dam­as­cus gov­ern­ment has banned all but a few for­eign jour­nal­ists and restricted local media’s reporting.

In a speech last Mon­day, Assad said the dis­rup­tive protests threat­ened to dam­age the Syr­ian econ­omy. For now, he can count on the sup­port of Syria’s small but grow­ing mid­dle class, which has seen life grad­u­ally improve since he began open­ing up the econ­omy. But if the econ­omy crum­bles, Assad could find his main base of sup­port erod­ing swiftly.

“The eco­nomic prob­lems Syria is fac­ing are a direct and pre­dictable con­se­quence of the Syr­ian author­i­ties’ deci­sion to chose repres­sion over reform,” Britain’s Hague said.

The military’s recent sweep through north­west­ern Syria, where armed resis­tance flared in early June, has sent more than 11,000 refugees flee­ing across the bor­der to refugee camps in Turkey.

Osso said those who did not flee on Thurs­day, as Syr­ian troops advanced right to the Turk­ish bor­der, were arrested — some 100 over the past two days.

Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu told reporters Fri­day he had con­veyed Turkey’s “con­cerns and thoughts” about the border-area mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with his Syr­ian coun­ter­part on Thursday.

He said he would con­tinue to talk to Syr­ian offi­cials to ensure that “reforms and peace are brought about as soon as possible.”

“We hope that Syria is suc­cess­ful in renew­ing itself in a sta­ble man­ner and comes out of the sit­u­a­tion stronger. We will do all that we can to help,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Jun 24 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.