Syrian Town Is Strained by Flood of Refugees

 

Barely 1,000 people live in Ain al-Beida, tucked on a hillside in densely wooded mountains five miles from the border with Turkey. But the population has tripled in the past two weeks as residents of a nearby town, Badama, have fled the advance of the Syrian security forces, fearing an attack that has not yet materialized.

On Saturday morning, Syrian troops swept into Badama, according to news reports. The Associated Press, citing the Local Coordination Committees, a group that documents anti-government protests, said troops backed by six tanks and several armored personnel carriers, entered Badama in the morning. The Reuters news service, citing eyewitnesses, reported that troops arrested dozens of people and burned houses as they entered the town.

The forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad occupied a neighboring village, Dreibat, on Thursday, residents of Ain al-Beida said, although they did not advance on their village on Friday.

The security forces’ brutal drive through Idlib Province has sent more than 8,000 people across the border into Turkey, where they are staying in tent camps set up by the Red Crescent. Thousands more are thought to be hiding in informal tent cities and small forest camps strung throughout the mountainous zone on the Syrian side of the border.

Here in Ain al-Beida, people are struggling to cope with an estimated 2,000 refugees who have sought shelter, living in cars and storerooms, at construction sites and in the school. The fortunate ones have been offered space in rough cinder block homes, on narrow streets that ramble down a slope from the border, with wire demarcations.

?“Every classroom in the school houses at least three families, and every house in town is housing three or four — in my house there are four,” said Ahmed, a resident who, like several others who were interviewed, gave only one name out of concern about retribution. He said most of the refugees had come from Badama and Jisr al-Shoughour, a major town in the province whose residents fled in advance of a military operation there last weekend.

Two weeks ago, fighting in Jisr al-Shoughour between security forces and military defectors or armed elements, or a mix of both, set the stage for the government’s aggressive crackdown in the region.

Many refugees said they left Badama out of fear that their town could be the next one to feel the government’s anger. Sheik Eyad Hassoun, 32, is from Badama, but leads prayers in the village mosque in Ain al-Beida. On Friday, he sat with a dozen men on thin mattresses in a tent pitched in a pasture above the town, just a few feet from the Turkish border. The men smoked cigarettes and grimly watched Al Jazeera’s coverage of protests in two Syrian cities, Homs and Hama, on a television connected by an extension cord to a distant cottage.

Sheik Hassoun left Badama after watching coverage of the military assault on Jisr al-Shoughour last Saturday and Sunday.

“I saw all the killing on TV and decided then to come here,” he said. He said he felt safe so close to the border because he could easily escape a government attack, if it came.

Down the hill in Ain al-Beida’s schoolhouse, the classrooms have been cleared of desks. Thin mattresses line the floors, and a jumble of pots and pans crowd around the blackboard. Electrical sockets are jammed with cellphone chargers. Children run across the schoolyard, whose wall has become a communal toilet.

“Life here is so hard,” said Hassouni, 19, who said he fled Badama a week ago with his family after plainclothes forces loyal to Mr. Assad drove down the main road firing randomly at civilians. He said his family was reluctant to cross into Turkey, fearing they might never be able to return home, so they came to Ain al-Beida instead.

After a week in the school, Hassouni said he was beginning to think that his family would inevitably end up in Turkey. “Going to Turkey is the last thing we would do, but now I think it is certain,” he said. “Things here will end. We will run out of food, and then we will have to go.”

Entire towns and villages in the region have emptied out, with people fleeing from the security forces, bringing economic activity to a halt. The security forces have set up a formidable line of checkpoints across the province, people in Ain al-Beida said, trying to block the flow of goods and people to the border zone.

“There are still people inside Syria who want to come here, but it’s forbidden,” said Abdullah, 32, a refugee from Badama who sat watching Al Jazeera with Sheik Hassoun.

Residents and refugees get by on stored goods and fruit plucked from the orchards, but they said their most important lifeline was a vast network of circuitous and secret smugglers’ paths that crisscross the fields and mountains leading to Turkey.

“We don’t get enough to eat; it all depends on what comes in from Turkey,” said Samar, 26, who left Badama with her husband and three young children. They were squatting in a bare room in an unfinished building overlooking a steep valley and Turkish military posts atop mountains on the other side. “It is our only source of food.”

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Syrian Army Kills 38 In North, Reports Say

Most of the deaths took place in Jisr al-Shoughour, where residents said 25 people had been killed by helicopter gunships bombarding the town and machine gun-mounted armored cars prowling the streets. Ten were reported to have died in the nearby village of Khan Sheikhoun, where tanks stood sentry between the main highway and the city center and a sniper perched in the minaret of one of the town’s main mosques.

“It is a big massacre,” said Abu Hussein, a resident of Jisr al-Shoughour with family in Khan Sheikhoun. “The civilians have no electricity or water, and there are no ambulances to hospitalize the wounded.”

Syria has been gripped since mid-March by a popular uprising against four decades of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family, and the government has responded to the revolt with a violent crackdown occasionally tempered by offers of political reform.

But there was little holding back over the weekend. The government unleashed the helicopter gunships, and residents in several cities said security forces appeared to move north to join the attack on its towns. Terrified residents streamed through the fields to escape the fighting, with dozens crossing the Turkish border and a large number reported arriving in the nearby port city of Latakia. On Sunday night, local activists said many of the fields had been set alight, and smoke hung over the town.

“They are trying to punish the residents for protesting,” said Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Association for Human Rights. “Dozens have been arrested over the last two days.”

The number of protesters in Idlib swelled so much in recent weeks that “the whole area is rising up,” said Wissam Tarif, a rights activist. Parts of the province had come to the kind of standstill associated with the besieged southern town of Dara’a, he said, where the arrest and torture of 15 schoolchildren for spraying antigovernment graffiti sparked the wave of uprisings.

Government tanks were reported to have pulled back slightly from the city of Hama on Sunday, a day after they were sent in to confront mourners for the 65 protesters killed Friday. The city was the site of a 1982 massacre when security forces commanded by President Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, bombarded it in a siege that killed at least 10,000 people.

Bracing for a new onslaught, residents barricaded the streets with large trash-hauling bins on Saturday night, but a tense calm reigned on Sunday night.

Tanks remained “very close” to the city, said Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled human rights activist and visiting scholar at George Washington University, but residents reached by phone said many had appeared to move north. One resident, who gave his name as Abu Mohamed, said he watched 40 tanks move north from the city’s eastern approach along the road to Idlib, past barricades and burning tires laid in the road by protesters.

Tensions remained high in Hama, Abu Mohamed said. A general strike closed all the shops on Saturday and Sunday. And rumors swirled that the secret police were still lurking, recruiting cab drivers to kidnap “rebels” off the streets and infiltrating hospitals to kill the wounded.

Residents reported quiet in the central city of Homs as army units moved north toward Hama and Idlib, but its suburbs Rastan and Talbiseh remained under siege. Shelling killed at least 70 in Rastan last week, and both were reeling Sunday from days of arrests, said Abu Omar, a resident reached by phone. “They arrested almost everybody,” he said. “There are no more people.”

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Israeli Soldiers Shoot at Protesters on Syrian Border

 

Wave after wave of protesters, mainly Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria, approached the frontier with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers opened fire on those who crossed a new trench and tried to attack the border fence near the towns of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights and Quneitra in Syria.

By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.

Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.

The protest, on the anniversary of the start of the 1967 Middle East war, followed a larger, coordinated assault by demonstrators three weeks ago on four fronts — Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank — and attempts on two others, Egypt and Jordan, that were thwarted by those governments.

This time, Lebanon and the Hamas government in Gaza kept protesters away from their borders, and the turnout was low in the West Bank.

The focus was on Syria, where thousands of protesters tried to force their way across the border. Syria’s decision to allow the protest appeared to reflect a calculated strategy to divert attention from its own antigovernment uprising.

Still, the protesters said they counted the day a success because they drew Israeli fire on unarmed demonstrators, generating outrage at Israel. At a time when the peace process is already strained, that reaction is likely to increase international pressure on Israel to create the conditions for resumed negotiations with the Palestinians, and to bolster support in the United Nations for the Palestinian appeal for statehood.

The young protesters, disillusioned with the stymied peace talks and continued Israeli settlement building, say they believe they have hit on a new tactic that at least achieves something, if at a cost, and they intend to repeat it.

“The plan is to clash with the soldiers now,” said Muhammad Abu al-Nassar, 25, who was protesting at a West Bank checkpoint. “We believe that unarmed popular resistance is the best form of ending the occupation.”

Israeli officials, who say they tried every nonlethal method of crowd control at their disposal before resorting to live fire, worry about being cast as the villain but admit they are in a bind.

“What would any country do if people from an enemy country were marching on its borders?” asked Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “We tried all other possible means to stop them.”

At the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not allow “extremist elements” to penetrate Israel’s borders. “I have instructed the security forces to act with determination, with maximum restraint, but with determination to maintain our sovereignty, our borders, our communities and our citizens,” he said.

A military spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, said that Israeli forces warned the protesters not to approach the border, in Arabic with megaphones; used nonlethal riot dispersal means like tear gas, which failed to deter them; and then fired warning shots in the air.

When the demonstrators reached the fence, soldiers were “left with no choice,” she said, “but to open fire at the feet of the protesters.”

Syria’s role also creates a quandary for Israel. Although the countries technically remain in a state of war, Syria has kept the border quiet for 37 years.

Protesters there could not have approached the border without government acquiescence, and analysts said the decision to allow the protest was aimed at deflecting attention from the protests sweeping Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“I would note that these protests were carried live on Syrian television” an Israeli official said. “They do not carry the protests against their own regime live. They made a decision to try to exploit this for their own purposes.”

The official spoke anonymously because, he said, Israel did not want to allow the protests to stoke tensions with Syria.

But even revived peace talks with the Palestinians would be unlikely to alter Mr. Assad’s calculations.

Rina Castelnuovo contributed reporting from Majdal Shams, Golan Heights, and Fares Akram from Gaza.

 

Syrian Troops Reportedly Enter Restive Coastal City

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.

It comes nearly two weeks after the military stormed Dara’a, a poor town near the Jordanian border where protests galvanized demonstrations across the country.

Reports were scant, as the military succeeded in blocking communication with most people in the town. Opposition groups, relying on their networks there, said the military entered the city from three directions before dawn and that civilians were forming human shields to block their deployment. There were no immediate reports of fatalities, but opposition groups reported hearing intense gunfire over the phone lines.

Gunboats were spotted off the coast.

“Landlines and cell phones have been out since dawn and power outages are spreading,” one activist said on condition of anonymity, citing reports from Baniyas.

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 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, they don’t have one yet and that is why they haven’t entered yet,” a resident there said by phone Friday. “When they will 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 Syrian towns and cities in a day of protests that activists declared a “Friday of Defiance,” killing 26. But a withering crackdown subdued the most restive town and prevented many protesters from gathering in larger demonstrations, activists and human rights groups said.

The worst violence was reported in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, where activists described a chaotic, bloody day, as tanks entered the town. 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. Sixteen 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, but by evening they had not. He estimated that the crowd 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. “Peaceful, peaceful,” he quoted them as chanting, “our demands are patriotic.”

Authorities have described Baniyas as a center of militant Islamists and even some activists acknowledge that they have a presence there, though by no means the 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 beset by smoldering sectarian tensions among 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.

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 initially responded with a mix of crackdown and concessions that proved largely rhetorical. 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. In addition to Baniyas, the towns on the capital’s outskirts, along with Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, and its hinterland have proven especially restive.

Activists said they had reports that electricity was cut to some of Damascus’ suburbs, which are said to be suffused with checkpoints and soldiers.

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Syrian Businessman Becomes Magnet for Anger and Dissent

Syriatel is owned by Rami Makhlouf, first cousin and childhood friend of President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s most powerful businessman. In the past decade, he has emerged as a strength and a liability of a government that finds its bastions of support shrinking and a figure to watch as Mr. Assad’s inner circle tries to deal with protests shaking his family’s four decades of rule.

Leery of the limelight, he is alternatively described as the Assad family’s banker or Mr. Five Percent (or 10, or whatever share gets the deal done). His supporters praise him for his investment in Syria, but they are far outnumbered by detractors, who have derided him in protests as a thief or worse. Sometimes more than Mr. Assad himself, he has become the lightning rod of dissent.

“We’ll say it clearly,” went a chant in Dara’a. “Rami Makhlouf is robbing us.”

Egypt had Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate who favored tight Italian suits (and now faces trial in white prison garb). In Tunisia, it was Leila Traboulsi, the hairdresser who became the president’s wife, then a symbol of the extravagance of the ruling family. Mr. Makhlouf, 41, is Syria’s version, a man at the intersection of family privilege, clan loyalty, growing avarice and, perhaps most dangerously, the yawning disconnect between ruler and ruled that already reshaped authoritarian Syria even before the protests.

Like Mr. Ezz in Egypt, he has become a symbol of how economic reforms turned crony socialism into crony capitalism, making the poor poorer and the connected rich fantastically wealthier.

“A huge liability,” was how a Syrian analyst described him.

“On the economic side, he really symbolizes what the people hate about the regime,” said the analyst, who asked not to be named. “They hate the security services and they hate Rami Makhlouf. On the economic side, Rami symbolizes the very worst about the way the country is run.”

An e-mail sent to Mr. Makhlouf’s company on Saturday, asking for comment, went unanswered. Calls to the headquarters seeking comment were not answered Saturday.

The origins of Mr. Makhlouf’s wealth mirror the consolidation of the Assad family’s rule over Syria. Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, a former air force commander who took power in 1970 and soon forged an alliance between officers like him from the Alawite minority and Sunni Muslim businessmen in Damascus, the capital, offered privileges to his wife’s family, the Makhloufs. Mr. Makhlouf inherited the mantle, while his brother, Hafez, went into the other family business — state security — taking over as intelligence chief in Damascus.

“Together they make quite a duo,” an Obama administration official said.

Though prominent even before Mr. Assad’s ascent in 2000, Mr. Makhlouf grew even wealthier as he and Egyptian partners won one of two mobile phone contracts. (The partners were eventually forced to sell.) Syriatel has about 55 percent of the market, Syrian economists say. As the reforms moved Syria away from a state-led economy, he penetrated the economy’s most lucrative sectors — real estate, transport, banking, insurance, construction and tourism — and his interests run from a five-star hotel in Damascus to duty-free shops at airports and the border. He is the vice chairman and, Syrian analysts say, the real power in Cham Holding, which was set up in 2007 with 73 investors and $360 million, in what seemed an attempt to tether wealthy Sunni businessmen to the government. It has effectively been charged with renovating Syria’s aging infrastructure, attracting Arab capital in another network of support for Mr. Assad’s rule.

Some praise him for the work, especially employees in Syriatel, whose sleek offices and good salaries make it the first choice of many young graduates for jobs.

 

Syrian Businessman Becomes Magnet for Anger and Dissent

Syriatel is owned by Rami Makhlouf, first cousin and childhood friend of President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s most powerful businessman. In the past decade, he has emerged as a strength and a liability of a government that finds its bastions of support shrinking and a figure to watch as Mr. Assad’s inner circle tries to deal with protests shaking his family’s four decades of rule.

Leery of the limelight, he is alternatively described as the Assad family’s banker or Mr. Five Percent (or 10, or whatever share gets the deal done). His supporters praise him for his investment in Syria, but they are far outnumbered by detractors, who have derided him in protests as a thief or worse. Sometimes more than Mr. Assad himself, he has become the lightning rod of dissent.

“We’ll say it clearly,” went a chant in Dara’a. “Rami Makhlouf is robbing us.”

Egypt had Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate who favored tight Italian suits (and now faces trial in white prison garb). In Tunisia, it was Leila Traboulsi, the hairdresser who became the president’s wife, then a symbol of the extravagance of the ruling family. Mr. Makhlouf, 41, is Syria’s version, a man at the intersection of family privilege, clan loyalty, growing avarice and, perhaps most dangerously, the yawning disconnect between ruler and ruled that already reshaped authoritarian Syria even before the protests.

Like Mr. Ezz in Egypt, he has become a symbol of how economic reforms turned crony socialism into crony capitalism, making the poor poorer and the connected rich fantastically wealthier.

“A huge liability,” was how a Syrian analyst described him.

“On the economic side, he really symbolizes what the people hate about the regime,” said the analyst, who asked not to be named. “They hate the security services and they hate Rami Makhlouf. On the economic side, Rami symbolizes the very worst about the way the country is run.”

An e-mail sent to Mr. Makhlouf’s company on Saturday, asking for comment, went unanswered. Calls to the headquarters seeking comment were not answered Saturday.

The origins of Mr. Makhlouf’s wealth mirror the consolidation of the Assad family’s rule over Syria. Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, a former air force commander who took power in 1970 and soon forged an alliance between officers like him from the Alawite minority and Sunni Muslim businessmen in Damascus, the capital, offered privileges to his wife’s family, the Makhloufs. Mr. Makhlouf inherited the mantle, while his brother, Hafez, went into the other family business — state security — taking over as intelligence chief in Damascus.

“Together they make quite a duo,” an Obama administration official said.

Though prominent even before Mr. Assad’s ascent in 2000, Mr. Makhlouf grew even wealthier as he and Egyptian partners won one of two mobile phone contracts. (The partners were eventually forced to sell.) Syriatel has about 55 percent of the market, Syrian economists say. As the reforms moved Syria away from a state-led economy, he penetrated the economy’s most lucrative sectors — real estate, transport, banking, insurance, construction and tourism — and his interests run from a five-star hotel in Damascus to duty-free shops at airports and the border. He is the vice chairman and, Syrian analysts say, the real power in Cham Holding, which was set up in 2007 with 73 investors and $360 million, in what seemed an attempt to tether wealthy Sunni businessmen to the government. It has effectively been charged with renovating Syria’s aging infrastructure, attracting Arab capital in another network of support for Mr. Assad’s rule.

Some praise him for the work, especially employees in Syriatel, whose sleek offices and good salaries make it the first choice of many young graduates for jobs.

 

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.

 

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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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.

 

US Skeptical About Syrian Law Changes

 David Gollust | State Department ?April 19, 2011

Mourners attend the funerals of protesters killed in earlier clashes in the Syrian city of Homs, April 18, 2011

The United States expressed skepticism Tuesday that a vote by Syria’s cabinet to end 48 years of emergency rule will actually ease human rights conditions there. The State Department confirmed U.S. opposition to Syria’s candidacy for the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Officials here say any gains from the vote lifting the state of emergency in Syria would apparently be negated by companion legislation regulating public protests, and they are renewing their call on authorities in Damascus to end violence against demonstrators.

The action by the Syrian cabinet followed a speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Saturday in which he promised to end the harsh emergency law in effect since 1963.

The cabinet Tuesday ratified draft legislation ending the state of emergency, and abolishing a special security court widely criticized by human rights activists. But it also approved a measure regulating peaceful protests that would require permission from the Syrian Interior Ministry for any demonstration.

At a news briefing, State Department Acting Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said the Syrian legislation, awaiting the signature of President Assad, may not yield any net gain for human rights in the country.

"In light of some of the comments we’ve seen from the interior minister, this new legislation may prove as restrictive as the emergency law it replaced," said Toner. "More fundamentally, there was more violence overnight, soldiers firing on peaceful protestors. Obviously the violence there continues to raise serious concerns. And it remains clear that the Syrian government need to urgently implement broader reforms."

Toner said that while President Assad has cast himself as a reformer, "we have seen a lot of words and not a lot of action" and that it is for the Syrian people to decide whether he has done enough.

Amnesty International says at least 200 people have been killed by security forces since demonstrations for democratic reforms began in Syria a month ago.

The? U.S. spokesman confirmed that the United States will oppose Syria’s candidacy for membership on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Syria is running unopposed for one of four seats reserved for Asian countries on the 47-nation council. It is thus is likely to win a seat unless another Asian country comes forward to contest the vote, set for late May.

Spokesman Toner said the Obama administration believes that given the Damascus government’s actions against its own people, it would be "inappropriate and hypocritical" for Syria to join the Human Rights Council.

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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.

 

Syrian President to Address Cabinet

 ? ?April 16, 2011

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (file photo)

Syrian officials say President Bashar al-Assad will address his new Cabinet on Saturday and his speech will be broadcast to the nation.

Assad unveiled a 30-member Cabinet on Thursday.? On the same day, he ordered the release of activists detained during recent anti-government protests, in an apparent bid to ease opposition unrest.

Meanwhile, witnesses and rights group say mourners gathered in the coastal city of Banias on Saturday for the funeral of a man that they say was shot by pro-government forces during a protest on Sunday. Some mourners chanted? in favor of freedom.

Separately, Syria's state-run news agency said a policeman was beaten to death by protesters Friday in the central city of Homs.

SANA reported Saturday that the police officer was hit with sticks and stones during a pro-democracy demonstration that had turned violent.

Protests flared across Syria on Friday.? The biggest demonstration was in the southern city of Daraa, which has become the epicenter of the opposition.

The demonstrations, which began last month, have turned violent at times as protesters have clashed with security forces.? Human rights groups say more than 200 people have been killed as authorities cracked down on the protests.? Syrian officials have blamed some of the unrest on lawless gangs.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

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