AARP Is Open to Cuts for Social Security Benefits

The group’s stance, which generated quick reaction from all sides because of its powerful voice on the issue, could provide added ammunition to fiscal conservatives who have sought unsuccessfully to restructure Social Security and chip away at the benefits it promises older Americans.

“Our goal is to limit any changes in benefits,” John Rother, AARP’s policy chief, said in a telephone interview, “but we also want to see the system made solvent.”

Mr. Rother said the group’s stance on possible cuts, which was first reported in The Wall Street Journal in Friday’s editions, should be seen less as a major change in position than as a reflection of the political and financial realities facing the Social Security system and the country as a whole.

“You have to look at all the tradeoffs,” Mr. Rother said, “and what we’re trying to do is engage the American public in that debate.”

He made clear that the group’s willingness to discuss cuts comes with conditions: Reductions in benefits should be “minimal,” they should not affect current recipients and instead should be directed “far off in the future,” and they should be offset by increases in tax-generated revenue.

Nonetheless, the group’s openness to the possibility of unspecified cuts was seen as a significant development by people on all sides of the Social Security question because of AARP’s influence on federal policies affecting older Americans, including Medicare, prescription drugs and many more.

Third Way, a moderate Democratic group in Washington that has favored possible reductions in benefits, called AARP’s position “a watershed moment” in the debate over Social Security.

“Now that they have opened the door to reform, it is time for lawmakers to walk through it,” said Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way.

But other advocacy groups that are pushing to preserve Social Security benefits accused AARP of effectively abandoning its core constituency.

Max Richtman, executive vice president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, an advocacy group in Washington, said the timing of AARP’s statements was particularly bad because it came in the midst of deliberations between the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans about the debt ceiling and overall deficit reduction.

AARP insisted that the Social Security trust funds should not be raided to reduce the deficit and that the two issues were separate. But Mr. Richtman said the group’s openness to considering future cuts would no doubt be used by deficit hawks to push for immediate cuts in Social Security benefits as part of the debate over deficit reduction.

“I think it’s tragic that AARP would, wittingly or unwittingly, play into the hands of people who have never really liked Social Security and want to decimate it,” Mr. Richtman said. “AARP is the 800-pound gorilla, but they do not speak for seniors.”

Republican leaders, who have led calls for revamping Social Security, had no immediate comments on AARP’s willingness to consider benefit reductions.

An aide to the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee, who spoke on condition of anonymity under committee protocol, said AARP’s position was a welcome acknowledgment that Social Security would be unable to pay future benefits at the current rate and that it must be restructured.

“The longer we wait,” the aide said, “the more difficult it will be to protect current beneficiaries and those who rely on Social Security the most.”

The most recent projections from the Social Security Administration, issued last month, indicate that at the current rate, the program’s trust funds will be exhausted by 2036, and that $6.5 trillion in additional money will be needed over a 75-year period to pay all scheduled benefits.

Mr. Rother said AARP expected to hear criticism from some of its members over its position on possible cuts.

“We have such a broad membership, Mr. Rother said. “I’m sure there will be some who will not be happy, but others will be eager to see the program put on a stronger financial footing for the long term.”

While AARP has not issued specific recommendations or figures on how benefit reductions might be carried out, the group’s recent discussions with its members signal support for using increased revenue to fill two-thirds of the projected gap, and benefits reductions for one-third, Mr. Rother said.

As word of AARP’s position set off debate in Washington on Friday, the group’s chief executive, Barry Rand, issued a formal statement saying that the group’s position had not changed in any substantive way and refuting what he described as “misleading” media reports.

“Let me be clear — AARP is as committed as we’ve ever been to fighting to protect Social Security for today’s seniors and strengthening it for future generations,” Mr. Rand said.?

While he did not directly address the question of possible cuts in benefits in his statement, Mr. Rand said his group would be working to evaluate any proposed changes in Social Security “to determine how each might — individually or in different combinations — impact the lives of current and future retirees.”

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Security on Higher Alert Across U.S.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has not issued an alert, the agency remains at what the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has called a “heightened state of vigilance.” The State Department, on the other hand, has issued a worldwide travel alert to Americans.

In Philadelphia, the police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey, has placed the department on “high alert,” increased patrols around religious buildings, and intensified security at tourist attractions and shopping malls, the police said.

“We haven’t added more personnel; we’re just doing more checks and asking our officers and citizens to be more aware,” said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman.

The additional security includes hourly checks at some of the city’s synagogues and mosques, as well as arranging meetings with building superintendents and representatives of large businesses and manufacturers to remind them to report suspicious activity to the police, Lieutenant Evers said.

In Phoenix, officials said they had supplemented security at the city’s airport, municipal buildings and houses of worship and on its light rail system, said Scott Krushak, the coordinator for Phoenix’s Office of Emergency Management.

“We’re not doing it because we’ve had any threats, but because it is part of a ‘lean forward’ strategy we have here in the city of Phoenix,” Mr. Krushak said. “We are really relying on the community to tell us if they see anything.”

In Los Angeles, the police sent additional officers to the Staples Center for the Lakers playoff basketball game against Dallas on Monday, and officials said they intended to also supplement police patrols at Dodger Stadium. Even before the death of Bin Laden, security at Dodgers games had been stepped up after a fan of the rival San Francisco Giants was badly beaten in a stadium parking lot last month.

In addition, Lt. Andy Neiman, a police spokesman, said the police were paying particular attention to airports, ports and telecommunications hubs.

At Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Debby Cummings, 44, who was on a flight from Detroit to visit friends in Los Angeles, said the security screening in Detroit seemed normal except that more passengers had been told to go through full-body scanners. Ms. Cummings said that she had not been overly concerned about flying, but that her 15-year-old son had worried the plane might explode.

“In Detroit they had two of the body scanners, which they were sending most people through, but other than that it was the same,” she said. “They only had one scanner before, and they didn’t used to make the majority of people go through it.”

In Chicago, the Police Department said it had sent additional officers to patrol around houses of worship, the Richard J. Daley Center, and at the United Center, where arena security personnel checked fans arriving to Monday night’s basketball game against Atlanta with handheld metal detectors.

Similar procedures were to be in place for an N.B.A. playoff game in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night and for all remaining basketball playoff games, officials said.

In Miami, the police have added officers with dogs at Miami International Airport, but many airports around the country, including those in San Francisco and Seattle, said they had taken no additional security precautions because the federal government had not issued a threat warning.

Timothy Williams reported from New York, and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles.

 

Security on Higher Alert Across U.S.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has not issued an alert, the agency remains at what the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has called a “heightened state of vigilance.” The State Department, on the other hand, has issued a worldwide travel alert to Americans.

In Philadelphia, the police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey, has placed the department on “high alert,” increased patrols around religious buildings, and intensified security at tourist attractions and shopping malls, the police said.

“We haven’t added more personnel; we’re just doing more checks and asking our officers and citizens to be more aware,” said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman.

The additional security includes hourly checks at some of the city’s synagogues and mosques, as well as arranging meetings with building superintendents and representatives of large businesses and manufacturers to remind them to report suspicious activity to the police, Lieutenant Evers said.

In Phoenix, officials said they had supplemented security at the city’s airport, municipal buildings and houses of worship and on its light rail system, said Scott Krushak, the coordinator for Phoenix’s Office of Emergency Management.

“We’re not doing it because we’ve had any threats, but because it is part of a ‘lean forward’ strategy we have here in the city of Phoenix,” Mr. Krushak said. “We are really relying on the community to tell us if they see anything.”

In Los Angeles, the police sent additional officers to the Staples Center for the Lakers playoff basketball game against Dallas on Monday, and officials said they intended to also supplement police patrols at Dodger Stadium. Even before the death of Bin Laden, security at Dodgers games had been stepped up after a fan of the rival San Francisco Giants was badly beaten in a stadium parking lot last month.

In addition, Lt. Andy Neiman, a police spokesman, said the police were paying particular attention to airports, ports and telecommunications hubs.

At Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Debby Cummings, 44, who was on a flight from Detroit to visit friends in Los Angeles, said the security screening in Detroit seemed normal except that more passengers had been told to go through full-body scanners. Ms. Cummings said that she had not been overly concerned about flying, but that her 15-year-old son had worried the plane might explode.

“In Detroit they had two of the body scanners, which they were sending most people through, but other than that it was the same,” she said. “They only had one scanner before, and they didn’t used to make the majority of people go through it.”

In Chicago, the Police Department said it had sent additional officers to patrol around houses of worship, the Richard J. Daley Center, and at the United Center, where arena security personnel checked fans arriving to Monday night’s basketball game against Atlanta with handheld metal detectors.

Similar procedures were to be in place for an N.B.A. playoff game in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night and for all remaining basketball playoff games, officials said.

In Miami, the police have added officers with dogs at Miami International Airport, but many airports around the country, including those in San Francisco and Seattle, said they had taken no additional security precautions because the federal government had not issued a threat warning.

Timothy Williams reported from New York, and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles.

 

Security on Higher Alert Across U.S.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has not issued an alert, the agency remains at what the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has called a “heightened state of vigilance.” The State Department, on the other hand, has issued a worldwide travel alert to Americans.

In Philadelphia, the police commissioner, Charles H. Ramsey, has placed the department on “high alert,” increased patrols around religious buildings, and intensified security at tourist attractions and shopping malls, the police said.

“We haven’t added more personnel; we’re just doing more checks and asking our officers and citizens to be more aware,” said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman.

The additional security includes hourly checks at some of the city’s synagogues and mosques, as well as arranging meetings with building superintendents and representatives of large businesses and manufacturers to remind them to report suspicious activity to the police, Lieutenant Evers said.

In Phoenix, officials said they had supplemented security at the city’s airport, municipal buildings and houses of worship and on its light rail system, said Scott Krushak, the coordinator for Phoenix’s Office of Emergency Management.

“We’re not doing it because we’ve had any threats, but because it is part of a ‘lean forward’ strategy we have here in the city of Phoenix,” Mr. Krushak said. “We are really relying on the community to tell us if they see anything.”

In Los Angeles, the police sent additional officers to the Staples Center for the Lakers playoff basketball game against Dallas on Monday, and officials said they intended to also supplement police patrols at Dodger Stadium. Even before the death of Bin Laden, security at Dodgers games had been stepped up after a fan of the rival San Francisco Giants was badly beaten in a stadium parking lot last month.

In addition, Lt. Andy Neiman, a police spokesman, said the police were paying particular attention to airports, ports and telecommunications hubs.

At Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, Debby Cummings, 44, who was on a flight from Detroit to visit friends in Los Angeles, said the security screening in Detroit seemed normal except that more passengers had been told to go through full-body scanners. Ms. Cummings said that she had not been overly concerned about flying, but that her 15-year-old son had worried the plane might explode.

“In Detroit they had two of the body scanners, which they were sending most people through, but other than that it was the same,” she said. “They only had one scanner before, and they didn’t used to make the majority of people go through it.”

In Chicago, the Police Department said it had sent additional officers to patrol around houses of worship, the Richard J. Daley Center, and at the United Center, where arena security personnel checked fans arriving to Monday night’s basketball game against Atlanta with handheld metal detectors.

Similar procedures were to be in place for an N.B.A. playoff game in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night and for all remaining basketball playoff games, officials said.

In Miami, the police have added officers with dogs at Miami International Airport, but many airports around the country, including those in San Francisco and Seattle, said they had taken no additional security precautions because the federal government had not issued a threat warning.

Timothy Williams reported from New York, and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles.

 

Syrian Security Forces Fire on Funeral Processions Causing More Bloodshed

 Edward Yeranian | Cairo ?April 23, 2011

A still image taken from an amateur video purportedly taken on April 22, 2011 shows a protester being carried by a group of other protesters during a demonstration in the city of Homs, Syria

Casualties, including at least 12? people dead, are being reported in at several Syrian cities Saturday as witnesses say government security forces opened fire on thousands of funeral goers. The bloodshed comes as U.S. President Barack Obama condemns the use of force against peaceful protesters and accuses Iran of helping in the repression. ?

Funeral goers in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh carry victims of Friday’s violent clashes between security forces and protesters on their shoulders, as the crowd chants slogans against the regime. Videos on Facebook show hundreds of mourners in a tumultuous procession.

Al Jazeera TV showed videos of mourners in Barzeh fleeing as shots were fired near them.?? It also reported that security forces fired indiscriminately on mourners near Izraa, outside the southern city of Diraa, as their procession crossed a highway overpass.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, is claiming that "Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are lying about events in the country."? The Syrian news agency SANA? insists that "outside forces" are waging a "misleading media campaign" and exaggerating about the size of protests. Opposition protesters, for their part, carried banners calling the government press "liars."

Some mourners on Saturday chanted anti-government slogans and repeated their calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign immediately.

Syrian state TV is reporting that "armed men" fired on the army and security forces in Diraa and elsewhere. It showed funerals of policemen and soldiers it claimed were killed by protesters. The Syrian-government reports accused outside agents of carrying petrol bombs and bottles of blood to "create fictitious stories of violence."? According to the reports, the agents also set fire to buses and attacked fire engines.

Two members of parliament from Diraa resigned to protest the government violence. The mufti of Diraa told al Jazeera TV that the shootings were "unacceptable" and announced he was resigning his post, as well.

Fahd al Masri of the Syrian opposition group Justice and Development says that security forces fired on protesters both on Friday and Saturday.

He said people were killed Saturday in the cities of Diraa, Homs and a Damascus suburb.? He adds that many people were killed and injured and thousands were arrested by state security forces on Friday.? He notes that the government’s announcement it was lifting martial law appears to have changed nothing and that security forces continue to fire on people.

Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in the U.S. western state of California and Director of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. He told VOA that he thinks it was inevitable that the wave of Arab revolutions finally hit Syria.

"This revolution was bound to come to Syria. It was just that it would come to Syria. It was proper to come to Syria. Syria could not be spared. The revolution was bound to come to Syria, because it was in Syria where the terrorist state, the way we know it in the Arab world,? basically took shape in the '70s. So, everything about this revolution perfectly fits Syria," he said.

Ajami points out that unlike Egypt and Tunisia, or even Libya, the presence of many different religious factions in Syria is raising the specter of sectarian violence:

"Once (the revolution) came to Syria, it had to be Syrian. It can't be Egyptian or Tunisian and thus it has to be violent and thus the hidden menace of sectarianism that could devour this revolution. That, at the very end when it's all fought,? it would become what it always was destined to become: a war where (the regime) would rally the Alawis and their allies among the Christians and the Druze and the Ismailis etc. against the vast Sunni middle class," he said.

Ajami also notes the secret police that supports the regime makes the equation in Syria even more volatile than in Libya. Opposition reports say that members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been seen attacking protesters alongside Syria’s secret police. The reports have not been independently confirmed.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned Syria Friday for using "outrageous force" against anti-government protesters, and said it "must come to an end, now." He also criticized President Assad for "seeking Iranian assistance in repressing Syria’s citizens."

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Security Forces Kill Dozens in Uprisings Around Syria

  Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA picture taken by a mobile phone shows anti-government protesters in Banias in northeastern Syria on Friday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Security forces in Syria met thousands of demonstrators with fusillades of live ammunition after noon prayers on Friday, killing at least 81 people in the bloodiest day of the five-week-old Syrian uprising, according to protesters, witnesses and accounts on social networking sites.

TimesCast | Syrian Violence Continues Anti-government protesters march during a demonstration following Friday prayers near Damascus, Syria, on Friday.

From the Mediterranean coast and Kurdish east to the steppe of the Houran in southern Syria, protesters gathered in at least 20 cities and towns, including in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Cries for vengeance intersected with calls for the government’s fall, marking a potentially dangerous new dynamic in the revolt.

“We want revenge, and we want blood,” said Abu Mohamed, a protester in Azra, a southern town that had the highest death toll Friday. “Blood for blood.”

The breadth of the protests — and people’s willingness to defy security forces who were deployed en masse — painted a picture of turmoil in one of the Arab world’s most authoritarian countries. In scenes unprecedented only weeks ago, protesters tore down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and toppled statues of his father, Hafez, in two towns on the capital’s outskirts, according to witnesses and video footage.

But despite the bloodshed, which promised to unleash another day of unrest as the dead are buried Saturday, the scale of the protests, so far, seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Organizers said the movement was still in its infancy, and the government, building on 40 years of institutional inertia, still commanded the loyalty of the military, economic elite and sizable minorities of Christian and heterodox Muslim sects who fear the state’s collapse.

Coming a day after Mr. Assad endorsed the lifting of draconian emergency rule, the killings represented another chapter in the government’s strategy of alternating promises of concessions with a grim crackdown that has left it staggering but still entrenched.

“There are indications the regime is scared, and this is adding to the momentum, but this is still the beginning,” said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “Definitely, we haven’t seen the millions we saw in Egypt or Tunisia. The numbers are still humble, and it’s a reality we have to acknowledge.”

The images of carnage marked one of the deadliest days of the so-called Arab Spring, and the coming days may be replete with its lessons. In other places in the Middle East, violence has led to funerals where many more are often killed. The government’s belated attempts at reform, meanwhile, have often simply escalated protesters’ demands.

In that, the government faces perhaps its greatest challenge: to maintain its bastions of support with promises for the future and threats that its collapse means chaos, against the momentum that the vivid symbols of martyrdom have so often encouraged.

“We are not scared anymore,” said Abu Nadim, a protester in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus. “We are sad and we are disappointed at this regime and at the president. Protests, demonstrations and death are now part of the daily routine.”

In a sharply worded statement, President Obama said the “outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now.” The statement also said President Assad was seeking Iranian help in repressing his people, but did not provide details.

In the capital, a city that underlines the very authority of the Assad family’s decades of rule, hundreds gathered after Friday Prayer at the al-Hassan Mosque. Some of them chanted, “The people want the fall of the government,” a slogan made famous in both Egypt and Tunisia. But security forces quickly dispersed the protests with tear gas, witnesses said. Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, appeared to remain relatively quiet.

The government’s determination to keep larger cities somewhat subdued may have led to some of the highest death tolls. Protesters in some towns on Damascus’s outskirts said security forces fired at them to prevent them from marching toward the capital. And in Azra, protesters said, government forces were intent on keeping them from Dara’a, a poor town 20 miles away that helped unleash the revolt in March.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.

 

Syrian Security Forces Fire on Mourners in Several Towns

The death toll from the protests on Friday, one of the bloodiest days in the so-called Arab Spring, had risen by Saturday to 109 people, a number that activists said was likely to rise as more bodies were returned to their families. Another group said 114 people had been killed.

The bloodshed on Saturday followed a pattern seen frequently in the tumult that has swept the Arab world. Funerals have often turned to demonstrations, where more have been killed by security forces bent on crushing dissent against authoritarian leaders. While Saturday’s death toll paled in comparison with the number killed on Friday, it suggested that the country might be entering a prolonged period of turmoil as protesters continue to press the greatest challenge to the Assad family’s four decades of rule.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government has struggled to cope with the unrest, offering concessions that would have been startling at one time, while using violence against those who persist in demonstrations. Though the revolt has drawn large numbers into the streets since it started on March 15, it has yet to achieve the critical mass of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. However, organizers say they believe the bloodshed may draw more people into the uprising’s fold.

In a possible sign of cracks in the government’s facade, two members of Syria’s largely powerless Parliament resigned on Saturday. The two, Khalil al-Rifai and Nasser al-Hariri, both independent lawmakers from Dara’a, where the uprising started, told Al Jazeera that they were resigning to protest the killing of demonstrators.

Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a human rights group, said that security forces fired live ammunition at mourners after they buried their dead. The funerals soon became protests, with calls for the fall of Mr. Assad, who inherited power from his father, Hafez, in 2000. Such demands, uttered publicly, were once unheard of and serve as a marker of how outrage is overcoming fear in the repressive state.

Mr. Tarif said 11 people were killed in towns on the outskirts of Damascus, where some of the worst bloodshed was reported Friday: Douma, Barza, Maadamiah and Qabon. Others were reported killed in Azra, but activists had yet to confirm their names.

In Barza, a witness who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said that at least 1,000 mourners came under fire as they prepared to bury four men and two children, one 7 years old and the other 14. The witness said security forces aimed directly at the mourners, many of whom sought shelter in the nearby Al-Salam mosque.

He said the shooting lasted at least 10 minutes. Religious leaders inside the mosque pleaded on loudspeakers for security forces to stop firing at unarmed protesters and called for medical help for the wounded.

“They shot directly at people, and all hell broke lose,” the witness said. “We could hear voices of children and people screaming frantically. We don’t know how many were killed, but we heard one saying on the phone that four of his neighbors were killed and many were injured.”

In Douma, another town on the outskirts of Damascus, at least 1,500 mourners marched from the main mosque to the cemetery, a witness said. As they approached a government building, police in plain clothes began firing at them, in barrages that lasted three hours.

“I saw people killed in front of me,” the witness said. “People were on the ground wounded, and no could assist them, help them or get to them.”

His voice turned angry. “How much people can take, we don’t know,” he said. “They’re not going to get killed every day and just keep watching. If we’re going to pay with our lives for the president’s reforms, then we don’t want his reforms.”

Friday’s violence started after the noon prayers, when thousands gathered in protest. Their demands have grown since the uprising began: from calls for reform to demands that President Assad step down.

In at least two towns, protesters tore down Mr. Assad’s picture and wrecked statues of his father.

Employees of The New York Times contributed from Beirut, Lebanon, and Damascus, Syria.

 

Security Forces Fire on Protesters in Restive Syrian City

The crowd had gathered to protest a deadly crackdown by the security forces, who activists say killed 14 demonstrators on Sunday. Tensions mounted throughout the day, and at about 2:10 a.m. on Tuesday the forces began firing again, witnesses said.

Shortly before 3 a.m., a woman who lives near the square said by cellphone: “Shooting is heard echoing through the city. The mosques are all calling for help. We fear that many are killed in the square, that it’s a massacre.” By early afternoon on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, people were staying inside their homes and the streets were largely deserted.

Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link in Damascus, said she heard shots over the phone while talking to a distraught friend in the square. He told her that he saw four people killed and dozens injured.

The renewed protests amounted to a rejection of concessions outlined by President Bashar al-Assad in a televised address Saturday, notably lifting the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency by the end of this week.

At the funeral processions in Homs on Monday, mourners in New Clock Tower Square at first offered traditional prayers for the dead. But then protesters began clapping and chanting against Mr. Assad as funeral marchers lofted coffins overhead.

Security forces fired in the air in the afternoon, witnesses said by telephone, but the crowds refused to disperse. At 7:45 p.m. a protester reported that security forces had begun surrounding the square as the crowd chanted, “A sit-in, a sit-in until the overthrow of the regime!”

The activists were calling the square “Tahrir” — the Arabic word for liberation and the name of the square in Cairo where mass protests toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.

“They want to create a Tahrir-like moment, a watershed event,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian opposition leader based in Maryland who is in touch with some of the young activists.

Another human rights activist, Rassem al-Atassy, said by telephone from Homs during the day, “The people are in charge in the city center now.”

Ahmad, 28, a university student at the Homs protest, said: “We people of Homs are calling for three days’ general strike to show our rejection of the cold-blooded killing of peaceful protesters. Homs is boiling and no one can tell you what will happen in the near future.”

Mr. Abdulhamid said the activists in the square were unarmed, but had organized themselves to sleep in shifts, anticipating an overnight confrontation.

Late Monday night, the state news agency, SANA, reported that the Interior Ministry was calling the unrest “an armed mutiny” led by radical Salafi Muslims.

“The ministry added that these armed groups have committed vicious crimes that the law would punish with the strongest penalties,” SANA said. “Those groups aim to create chaos and terrify the Syrian people, exploiting the reform and freedom process launched within a comprehensive program according to specific timetables announced by President Bashar al-Assad.”

Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian human rights activist who is a visiting scholar at George Washington University, said the ministry’s statement suggested that Syria’s government was planning a showdown with protesters.

“I’m very concerned about the statement,” Mr. Ziadeh said. “This is a justification for what they intend to do in next few hours. This is the green light for armed confrontation.

“I’ve just talked to five or six protesters in Homs, and there are lots of women and children in the square, families, the women making sandwiches. From the minarets they were calling for more to join the demonstration. They estimated there were 50,000 by now.

“But all the communication has been cut now. I lost them.”

Ms. Zeitouneh, of the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, said as many as 20 people might have died in Homs on Sunday. Security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters with live ammunition and tear gas, said another witness reached by phone.

State media reported that an army officer, Brig. Gen. Khodir al-Tilawi, two of his sons, and a nephew were ambushed, shot to death and brutally mutilated by “armed criminal groups.”

Ms. Zeitouneh also said she had received reports from the coastal town of Latakia that security forces had opened fire Sunday night on protesters there as well. The number of casualties was not immediately known.

Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that five died in Latakia.

Human rights activists said on Monday that forces in both Homs and Latakia were arresting wounded protesters inside local hospitals, leading a doctor in Homs to say that as many as a dozen patients in critical condition might have died in detention.

The Syrian protests coincided with new disclosures that in 2005 the United States began to secretly finance some Syrian opposition groups intent on toppling Mr. Assad. The disclosures, in diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, showed State Department funding for Barada TV, an anti-Assad satellite broadcaster run by Syrian exiles in London, as well as concern by American diplomats in Syria that Syrian intelligence agents began to suspect the financing two years ago.

Liam Stack reported from Cairo, and Katherine Zoepf from New York. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria, Scott Shane from Washington, and J. David Goodman from New York.