The military’s move against Baniyas, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city that witnessed some of the largest protests in nationwide demonstrations a day earlier, was another signal that the Syrian government was determined to crush by force dissent that has posed a sweeping challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s 11-year rule.
The attack mirrored other assaults since Friday on Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, and a restive town on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital. It comes nearly two weeks after the military stormed and effectively occupied Dara’a, a poor town in a drought-stricken region near the border with Jordan where protests have galvanized demonstrations across the country.
Reports were scant, as the military succeeded in blocking communication with most people in Baniyas. Opposition groups, relying on their networks there, said that the military entered the city from three directions under the cover of night and that civilians were trying to block their deployment. There were no immediate reports of fatalities, but opposition groups reported hearing intense gunfire over the phone lines.
Gunboats were also spotted off the coast.
“Land lines and cellphones have been out since dawn, and power outages are spreading,” one activist said on the condition of anonymity, citing reports from Baniyas.
Soon after entering the town, security forces began making arrests, though there were no precise numbers, said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a human rights group.
“Basically, we don’t know what’s happening in Baniyas,” he said, adding that he had been talking with someone by phone and “heard firing, bullets, shooting and screaming, and then we lost contact.”
For days, residents had braced for an attack on Baniyas, as the Syrian military deployed scores of tanks and armored vehicles to the city’s southern outskirts. Paramilitary groups were said to have massed at its northern edge, populated by members of the minority Alawite sect, from which Mr. Assad’s government draws much of its support.
“They are preparing a scenario to justify raiding the city,” a resident said by phone on Friday. “They don’t have one yet, and that is why they haven’t entered yet. When they do, they will make Baniyas a lesson to all the Syrians, and it is going to be ugly.”
On Friday, security forces fired on demonstrators in six towns and cities in a day of protests that activists declared a “Friday of Defiance,” killing at least 41 people. But a crackdown that has escalated over the past two weeks managed to subdue Dara’a and prevented many protesters from gathering in larger demonstrations, particularly on the outskirts of Damascus, activists and human rights groups said.
The worst violence was reported in Homs, where activists described a chaotic, bloody day, as tanks entered the town and areas around it. The government said 10 soldiers were killed there by what it described as “terrorists,” while activists said at least nine soldiers had defected to their side. Seventeen protesters were killed, they said.
Only in Baniyas and Jassem, a town near Dara’a, were demonstrators able to mass in larger protests. The resident in Baniyas said that protesters there had carried olive branches and red and white roses to hand to soldiers if the troops entered the city. They did, but only in the early hours of Saturday morning when many were sleeping.
The resident estimated that the crowd on Friday numbered at least 7,000, many of whom chanted for freedom, for the government’s fall and for the military to lift its siege of Dara’a.
The authorities have described Baniyas as a center of militant Islamists, and even some activists acknowledge that militants have a presence there, though by no means a majority. Civic leaders in Baniyas have insisted that the charge is a government ploy to stoke tensions between Sunni Muslims and Alawites, one of the fault lines in a country troubled by smoldering sectarian tensions between the Sunni Muslim majority and minorities of Christians and heterodox Muslim sects. Eastern Syria is populated by an ethnic minority, Kurds, who appeared to turn out in greater numbers in the streets on Friday.
Security forces, with the help of the military, also moved against the town of Zabadani, on the edge of Damascus. Mr. Tarif said that electricity and communications were cut to the town from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon, and checkpoints remained across the town. His group documented at least 80 arrests over that period, he said.
Mr. Tarif suggested that the assaults on Baniyas, Homs and Zabadani borrowed a page from the military’s attack on Dara’a and signaled the government’s intent to methodically move against centers of protest in the country with overwhelming force.
“They are doing it city by city,” he said. “The regime is willing to take it to the maximum, and they are willing to increase the brutality to the maximum.”
Mr. Assad, who inherited power from his father, Hafez, in 2000, initially claimed that Syria was immune to the tumult sweeping the Arab world. When the uprising erupted in Dara’a, he responded with a mix of crackdowns and concessions that proved largely cosmetic. For the past two weeks, the government has almost entirely relied on force, and there appears to be a sense in official circles that the government has the upper hand.
So far, hundreds have been killed, and Mr. Tarif’s group estimated that as many as 4,000 have been detained, often for a few days, since the crackdown escalated.
But administration officials have suggested that the government is worried about growing condemnation abroad; the European Union on Friday banned travel for and froze the assets of 14 Syrian officials, though not Mr. Assad.
The crackdown’s severity has also angered Turkey, Syria’s neighbor and one of its closest allies, though there appears to be disagreement in the Turkish government over whether Mr. Assad is unable or unwilling to carry out broader reform in a country that remains one of the region’s most authoritarian.
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