Syrian Forces Shoot at Protesters Trying to Break Siege

 

The bloodshed in the besieged town, Dara’a, was the worst episode on another violent Friday. At least 40 people were killed across the country, repeating a cycle that has become a fixture of the most serious challenge to the Assad family’s four decades of dictatorial rule. For weeks, demonstrators have poured into the streets after noon prayers, only to face the determination of the government to disperse them, often with live ammunition.

But the cries of grief in Dara’a and angry chants in dozens of towns and cities on Friday seemed to signal a new dynamic in the uprising. As much as calls for freedom and an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the protest movement appeared to be feeding off its own symbols and legitimacy, as the demonstrators’ anger grows over the suffering inflicted on Dara’a and the deaths of more than 500 protesters — by activists’ count — since March.

“Stop the siege of Dara’a!” demonstrators shouted in Homs, Syria, near the Lebanese border.

“We cannot challenge the government,” said an opposition figure in Damascus who asked not to be identified. “They’re armed, and we’re unarmed. If they want to kill us, they can kill us. If they want to arrest us, they can arrest us. But no matter how much blood gets spilled and how violent it gets, this is our country, and we’re not giving it up.”

Friday was viewed as a test of sorts for both sides — whether the government might ease its crackdown after killing 112 protesters a week earlier, and whether demonstrators would defy blunt warnings and the threat of more force by returning to the streets. In the end, neither budged, and organizers seemed buoyed by the turnout.

“I’m amazed,” Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said early in the day. “People are in the streets. I can’t believe it.

“The government is going to have to reconsider their strategy,” he added.

So far, there are few signs of it doing so, despite international condemnation, American moves to place sanctions on Syrian officials and a European effort to impose an arms embargo.

In the uprising’s early weeks, the government tried to stanch the unrest with a mix of mostly hollow concessions and force. Since last week, it has emphasized the latter, an indication underscored by the shootings on Friday.

Some cracks have emerged in its facade, with reports this week of desertions from the military in Dara’a and even fighting among troops, along with the resignations of nearly 300 low-level members of the Baath Party, which has ruled in some fashion since 1963.

Though the government has vast resources to draw on — and bastions of support, particularly among religious minorities — it faces an evolving revolt that it has proven unable to crush and that may be widening.

“There really isn’t a coalesced movement yet or official organizers of the protests,” an Obama administration official said. “It’s almost an organic thing. The more violence happens, the more the cycle continues, the more people hit the street.”

Residents and activists painted a wrenching portrait of the scene in Dara’a, a poor town in southern Syria near the Jordanian border where protests last month helped galvanize nationwide demonstrations.

The military had stormed the town on Monday, effectively occupying it, but the ensuing hardships — shortages of food, water and even baby formula, in addition to dozens of reported deaths — have become a rallying cry of the revolt, unleashing solidarity protests in other towns and neighboring countries.

Inside the town, residents said people were too afraid to go into the streets, or even to attend Friday Prayer. Instead, they shouted “God is great!” from within their homes, the chants growing louder as residents in building after building took up the cry.

As they did, residents said, soldiers fired into the air.

“We are living in complete isolation,” a resident said.