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BEIRUT -- Syrian security forces shot dead at least 10 people overnight in a central city where dozens have been reported killed since the weekend, activists and witnesses said.
Mohammed Saleh, a resident of Homs, said smoke was billowing over the city after a night of intense gunfire.
The death toll was confirmed by Syrian rights activist Mustafa Osso and the Local Coordinating Committees, which organize and track the protests. Damascus-based Abdul-Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian Human Rights League, also said there were casualties in Homs but he did not have an exact figure.
Syria has been trying to crush a four-month-old uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 40-year ruling dynasty of the Assad family.
Human rights groups say more than 1,600 people, most of them unarmed civilians, have been killed in President Bashar Assad's crackdown on a largely peaceful protest movement. The government disputes that toll and blames the unrest on gunmen and religious extremists looking to stir up sectarian strife.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Saleh, the activist in Homs, said a wave of sectarian fighting killed up to 30 people there over the weekend. Both said they have the names of the victims.
Witnesses said the violence began Saturday after the corpses of three Alawite government supporters were dumped in Homs with their eyes gouged, prompting revenge attacks by pro-government militias.
But other activists said the toll was lower and blamed security forces for the killings.
The opposition accused Assad's minority Alawite sect of trying to stir up trouble with the Sunni majority to blunt the growing enthusiasm for the uprising. The protesters have been careful to portray their movement as free of any sectarian overtones.
Syria has banned independent media coverage, making it difficult to confirm accounts from the ground.
The pro-government daily Al-Watan blamed the violence in Homs on terrorists and said the army was deploying there.
Saleh, the Homs-based activist, said there was intense shooting all through the night until Tuesday morning in some areas of Homs. He saw smoke billowing from the area amid cracks of gunfire.
"People who don't have important work to do are staying at home," Saleh said.
BEIRUT -- Syria warned the American and French ambassadors Wednesday not to travel outside the capital without permission, two weeks after they angered the regime by visiting a city that has become the center of the country's four-month-old uprising.
If the U.S. and French envoys disobey the order, Syria will ban all diplomats from leaving Damascus, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said during a lecture at Damascus University.
"We did not evict the two ambassadors because we want the relations to develop in the future and in order for their governments to review their stances toward Syria," al-Moallem said.
"If these acts are repeated, we will impose a ban preventing (diplomats) from going more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside Damascus," he said.
Syria has come under withering international criticism and sanctions for its crackdown on dissent, which activists say has killed some 1,600 people, most of them unarmed protesters.
The regime has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted media coverage, making it nearly impossible to independently verify events on the ground.
On July 7 and 8, U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier traveled to Hama in separate trips to express support for the Syrian people to demonstrate peacefully. The State Department said friendly Syrians welcomed Ford and lavished his car with flowers and olive branches.
Hama residents told The Associated Press that the visits helped prevent attacks by security forces.
But the regime seized on Ford's visit to insist that foreign conspirators are behind the unrest, not true reform-seekers. Relations between the U.S. and Syria are chronically strained over Assad's ties with Iran. Within hours of the visit being made public, regime supporters attacked the U.S. and French embassies in Damascus, smashing windows and painting graffiti.
Three French Embassy workers were injured.
Also Wednesday, Syrian security forces swept through restive neighborhoods, detaining dozens of people including a key opposition figure, activists said.
Security forces targeted suburbs of Damascus and the central city of Homs, which has seen some of the most intense and sustained violence in recent days. Up to 50 people have been killed there since Saturday, according to activists and witnesses. The figure could not be verified.
George Sabra, who heads the outlawed National Democratic Party, was picked up from his home in the Damascus suburb of Qatana, said the Local Coordination Committees, which help organize and document the protests in Syria. It was the second time that Sabra has been arrested since the uprising began.
In Homs, a father and his four sons were among those pulled from their homes overnight, said an activist in the city. He asked that his name not be published for fear of reprisals.
He added that soldiers and armored personnel carriers were patrolling the city, along with plainclothes security agents carrying automatic rifles.
Have you seen the administration wants to impose sanctions?????? That country must be really "evil". Oh wait, this administration wants to impose sanctions against.........................
wait for it ....................
wait for it ....................
Iceland!
Yes, it appears hunting whales is far more damaging to this country than radical islam. Be on guard, some "radical" whale hunter might be in your neighborhood with harpoons. They try to "blend in", so be really careful, because you just never know when you could get harpooned. Those whales go everywhere, and those whale hunters, well they are not as careful as they should be.
Maybe we should move some whales to Syria, and let those Icelandic hunters fix the ME!
Have you seen the administration wants to impose sanctions?????? That country must be really "evil". Oh wait, this administration wants to impose sanctions against.........................
wait for it ....................
wait for it ....................
Iceland!
Yes, it appears hunting whales is far more damaging to this country than radical islam. Be on guard, some "radical" whale hunter might be in your neighborhood with harpoons. They try to "blend in", so be really careful, because you just never know when you could get harpooned. Those whales go everywhere, and those whale hunters, well they are not as careful as they should be.
Maybe we should move some whales to Syria, and let those Icelandic hunters fix the ME!
Wait a minute, I thought we already put sanctions on Syria? not that it will do any good, but I thought it was done.
Have you seen the administration wants to impose sanctions?????? That country must be really "evil". Oh wait, this administration wants to impose sanctions against.........................
wait for it ....................
wait for it ....................
Iceland!
Yes, it appears hunting whales is far more damaging to this country than radical islam. Be on guard, some "radical" whale hunter might be in your neighborhood with harpoons. They try to "blend in", so be really careful, because you just never know when you could get harpooned. Those whales go everywhere, and those whale hunters, well they are not as careful as they should be.
Maybe we should move some whales to Syria, and let those Icelandic hunters fix the ME!
Wait a minute, I thought we already put sanctions on Syria? not that it will do any good, but I thought it was done.
I was implying how silly the sanction on Iceland must appear to the ME (who judge by strength and power). How important can the sanctions on Iran or Syria be if simple whale hunters can be sanctioned? What is next, santioning other countries that don't offer pink and yellow lemonaide at the restaurants?
HOMS, Syria On the birth of his daughter this month, a young activist in this central city bestowed on her a name that had little resonance until not so long ago. Daraa, he called her, the namesake of the southern Syrian town where the antigovernment uprising began.
Syria is awash in such stories of solidarity these days, bridging traditional divides that have colored the countrys politics for generations. But far from disappearing, the old divisions of geography, class and, in particular, religious sect are deepening.
Syrians offer different explanations. Protesters blame the cynical manipulation of a government bent on divide and rule, and the government points to Islamist zealots seeking to impose a tyranny of the majority.
Which prevails new loyalties born of revolution, or old rivalries entrenched in smaller identities may decide the fate of Syrias four-month revolt.
Colliding along the front lines of the uprising, and especially here in Homs, these forces suggest a grim reality of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad: the longer his government remains in power, the less chance Syria has to avoid civil strife, sectarian cleansing and the kind of communal violence that killed at least two dozen people in Homs last week. Unlike in Egypt, and despite the protesters hope and optimism, time is not necessarily on their side, a point that some of them admit.
If the government keeps playing the sectarian card, theyre going to get what they want, said Iyad, 27, the activist who named his daughter after the cradle of the uprising. If this regime lasts, theres absolutely going to be a civil war, absolutely.
That is not to say that anyone really knows what kind of state the protesters want. In Homs last week, pious activists debated the differences between an Islamic and civil state, both of which they said should rely on religious law. Minorities fear militant currents within the Sunni Muslim majority. Sunnis seethe at the injustice of living for decades under a state endowed with a remarkable capacity for violence and led by the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect. Even some activists celebrating the unity that the revolt has brought warn that repression is breeding strife.
The government is going to push us in the direction of violence, said a former Republican Guard officer who has joined the ranks of protesters in Homs, Syrias third-largest city, with a Sunni majority and Alawite minority. A lot of guys think its almost over, but I dont. The situation, very regrettably, is going to become a crisis, by which he meant bloodshed.
As was the case in Iraq, a sectarian lens is often unfairly imposed on Syrias diversity, with its sizable communities of Christians, Alawites and ethnic Kurds. Other divisions are no less pronounced between cities like Damascus and Aleppo, among classes, between the countryside and urban areas and within extended clans, especially in eastern Syria. Residents of Hama said they long felt discriminated against, especially in the military, which carried out a brutal crackdown there in 1982. Hama and Homs were traditional rivals in central Syria.
These days, chants ring out in protests that suggest a growing sense of nationalism, often reinforced by virtual communities that disseminate information.
At the Khalid bin Walid mosque, a center of dissent in Homs, protesters chant, With our souls and blood, we sacrifice for you, Daraa. Solidarity with Homs, the scene of a persistent crackdown, is heard in Hama, where activists say they have sometimes traveled back and forth in an effort to build what one activist called a culture of protest.
This is the beauty of the revolution, said Ahmed, a 28-year-old smuggler and protester, sitting with others in a safe house near Homs. He didnt know him, he didnt know him and he didnt know him before the protests, he said, pointing to his friends. This is the result of the regimes oppression. Now were ready to defend each other.
BEIRUT -- A human rights group says Syrian security forces have killed eight people in an attack on a Damascus suburb.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says residents of the southern Kanaker suburb tried to stop the advancing troops by throwing stones and closing roads with burning tires.
The group says Wednesday's raid also wounded a number of people who are being treated in mosques. It says the raid occurred after electricity and telephones were cut off in the area.
President Bashar Assad's regime has unleashed a brutal crackdown on the four-month-old uprising. Activists say more than 1,600 people have been killed. The government blames the unrest on terrorists and foreign extremists.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BEIRUT (AP) Syria's state-run news agency says the government has endorsed draft legislation that would enable newly formed political parties to run for parliament and local councils.
The move is part of President Bashar Assad's promised reforms aimed at ending a four-month-old uprising against his rule. Protest leaders say they won't accept anything short of Assad's ouster.
The SANA news agency reported Wednesday that draft was approved by the Cabinet late Tuesday and will have to go before parliament where approval is likely. Assad's Arab Socialist Baath Party has been in control of parliament for four decades.
The Cabinet earlier paved the way for the formation of political parties.
BEIRUT -- Ibrahim Qashoush's lyrics moved thousands of protesters in Syria who sang his jaunty verses at rallies, telling President Bashar Assad, "Time to leave." So when his body was dumped in the river flowing through his hometown, his killers added an obvious message: His throat was carved out.
Qashoush's slaying underlines how brutal Syria's turmoil has become as authorities try to crush a persistent uprising. His fellow activists are convinced he was killed by security forces and fear it could mark a new campaign to liquidate protest leaders.
An estimated 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests that have been raging around Syria for more than four months, most from shootings by troops on anti-Bashar rallies. Qashoush's case was a rare, targeted killing of a prominent activist made more chilling by the clear intention to send a bloody message.
The 42-year-old Qashoush, a father of three boys, was a fireman in the central Syrian city of Hama who wrote poetry in his spare time, said a close friend, Saleh Abu Yaman. Before the uprising began in mid-March, he'd write about love or hard economic times.
"All the poems and songs he wrote were by instinct. He used to be sitting with his friends and then start reciting a poem," Abu Yaman said.
But once the protests erupted and spread, Qashoush turned his pen to the uprising. Hama became one of the hottest centers of the demonstrations. In early June, security forces shot dead 65 people there, and since than it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing it, conducting overnight raids into the city.
The hometown son's star rose with the city. At nearly every protest, the crowds were singing his most popular lyric, "Come on, Bashar, time to leave." It was put to a bouncy tune, and his poems rang with a down-to-earth, jokey
"Screw you, Bashar, and screw those who salute you. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!" hundreds of thousands sang behind a singer on stage in Hama's central Assi Square during a rally at the beginning of the month. "Freedom is at our doors. Come on, Bashar, time to leave!"
Two days later, on July 3, Qashoush disappeared.
Abu Yaman says he was told by witnesses that Qashoush was walking to work in central Hama when a white vehicle stopped, several men jumped out and muscled him into the car. They then sped away.
"We immediately knew he was captured by security agents," Abu Yaman told The Associated Press.
Early the next day, residents found his body in the Orontes River, which cuts through Hama. His throat had been cut away. YouTube footage of his body shows him being put on a bed, his head flopping loosely to show a gaping, bloody wound on the front of his neck where his throat used to be.
"This is a purely criminal act," said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, which track the protests in Syria. "They executed him."
Repeated calls to Qashoush's home by the AP were unanswered over the past days. It is nearly impossible to independently verify the claims on either side of the conflict in Syria, where the government has banned most foreign journalists and restricts coverage by reporters inside the country.
BEIRUT A global campaigning organization said Thursday that one person disappears in Syria every hour and that almost 3,000 people have gone missing since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad more than four months ago.
The online activist group Avaaz.org said its investigation has identified 2,918 Syrians who were arrested or abducted by force by security troops and whose whereabouts are now unknown.
The group published the results of its probe in a statement, which was e-mailed to The Associated Press. It also kicked off a campaign called "Save Syria's Disappeared" on its website Thursday.
"Hour by hour, peaceful protesters are plucked from crowds by Syria's infamously brutal security forces, never to be seen again," said Ricken Patel, executive director at Avaaz.
The group called on the international community to step up demands for the release of the disappeared and for a transition to democracy in Syria.
Syrian activists say more than 1,600 people most of them unarmed protesters have been killed by security forces since the revolt against Assad's rule erupted in mid-March.
Although the uprising began with calls for reform, the steadily climbing death toll and slow pace of reform has enraged the protesters' movement. Now, many of them say they won't accept anything short of Assad's ouster.
Avaaz said it has identified 1,634 who were killed in the crackdown since March 15. Moreover, 26,000 have been arrested, and many of them were beaten and tortured. Some 12,617 are still in detention, the group said.
It said it worked with Syrian human rights organizations to document the names and photos of each disappeared case.
Assad has tried to deal with the extraordinary revolt against his family's 40-year dynasty through a security crackdown, but has also acknowledged the need for reform. He has lifted the decades-old state of emergency laws and this week endorsed draft legislation that would enable newly formed political parties to run for parliament and local councils.
The government also endorsed a draft law that it says will allow the formation of political parties alongside the Baath Party something that had been a key demand of the protest movement.
Still, opposition figures dismissed the moves as maneuvering tactics, insisting they want regime change.
A group of government opponents known as the Change in Syria Conference on Thursday said the moves were "desperate attempts at cosmetic change," coming from a regime that has lost national legitimacy.
"The regime's attempts to blunt international pressures through these two draft bills and others will not help and will not turn back the clock," the group said in a statement.
The military crackdown continued this week, with Syrian troops opening fire Wednesday on scores of people in the Damascus suburb of Kanaker, killing at least eight people.
On Thursday, some 400 security members deployed at the city's entrance as people prepared to bury the dead, activists said.
Also Thursday, security forces swept through the Barzeh neighborhood of Damascus, raiding homes and arresting more than a 100 people, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
BEIRUT Tanks took over a main square in the besieged Syrian city of Hama and electricity and telephone phone lines were cut off Wednesday as President Bashar Assad's regime showed no signs of halting the intense military assault against an uprising now in its fifth month, activists said.
At least three tanks took up position in Hama's central Assi square, which had been thronged by hundreds of thousands of anti-regime protesters in the weeks before the latest crackdown in some the largest demonstrations against Assad's rule.
For the past four days, Syrian troops have tightened their siege on Hama, sending residents fleeing for their lives. The death toll since Sunday has reached around 100 people, but the exact figure is difficult to verify, according to activists.
Activists reported a new military push into the city early Wednesday, with fresh explosions and machine gun fire heard in many parts of the city.
"We are being subjected to shelling, machine gun fire, snipers fire, everything you can think of," said activist Omar al-Hamawi.
Electricity and telephone lines were cut Wednesday morning but mobile phone lines appeared to have been partially restored by early afternoon.
Al-Hamawy, reached by phone, said the shelling was mostly targeting al-Hader neighborhood. He said sporadic tank and gunfire was also heard in various other parts of the city. He spoke briefly saying he had to save his phone battery to call and check on relatives.
Telephone calls to other activists and Hama residents were not going through.
"Early this morning people heard the sound of bombs," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Then the phone lines were cut."
He says residents on the outskirts of Hama reported seeing lines of tanks heading toward the city early in the day, and the blasts were heard soon after.
The observatory relies on a network of sources on the ground throughout Syria.
The Hama operation has drawn a fresh wave of international condemnation against a regime defying the growing calls to end its crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday met with U.S.-based Syrian democracy activists as the Obama administration weighed new sanctions on Syria. Congressional calls also mounted for action against Assad's regime.
Italy recalled Tuesday its ambassador to Syria "in the face of the horrible repression against the civil population" by the government, which launched a new push against protesters as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began Monday.
It was the first European Union country to pull its ambassador, and the measure came a day after the EU tightened sanctions on Syria.
The mounting international outcry has had no apparent effect so far in Syria, an autocratic country that relies on Iran as a main ally in the region.
About 1,700 civilians have been killed since the largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime began in mid- March, according to tallies by activists.
Syria has banned independent media coverage and has prevented most foreign journalists from entering the country, preventing independent assessments of the events.
Hama, the focus of the crackdown, has a history of defiance.
BEIRUT -- Gunmen in plainclothes are randomly shooting people in the streets of the besieged Syrian city of Hama and families are burying their loved ones in gardens at home for fear of being killed themselves if they venture out to cemeteries, a resident said Thursday.
Military forces on Sunday launched an offensive against anti-government dissent in Hama and at least 100 people have been killed since, according to human rights groups. Phones, Internet and electricity have been cut or severely hampered for days. The resident told The Associated Press people are being forced to ration food and share bread to get by during the holy month of Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk then celebrate with large, festive meals after sundown.
"People are being slaughtered like sheep while walking in the street," said the resident, who spoke by phone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "I saw with my own eyes one young boy on a motorcycle who was carrying vegetables being run over by a tank." He said he left Hama briefly through side roads to smuggle in food supplies.
The resident said around 250 people have been killed since Sunday. Hozan Ibrahim, of the Local Coordination Committees which tracks the crackdown on protesters, said up to 30 people may have been killed in Hama Wednesday only based on reports from fleeing residents. But neither of those numbers could be immediately verified.
Families have resorted to burying their loved ones in home gardens or roadside pits "because we fear that if we go to the cemetery, we will end up buried along with them," the resident said.
He said the army and pro-government gunmen known as "shabiha" have been shooting randomly at people and keeping food supplies from entering the city. He said he knew they are allied with the military because they sometimes walk behind soldiers and talk to them.
Activists have expressed concern about worsening humanitarian conditions in Hama, saying medical supplies and bread were in short supply even before the latest siege. Phones and Internet in Hama have been cut or severely hampered for at least two days. Electricity has been out or sporadic since Sunday.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the London-based Observatory for Human Rights, said some 1,000 families have fled Hama in the past two days, most of them to the village of Mashtal Hilu west of Hama and al-Salamieh to the east.
The siege of Hama is part of a new government offensive to put down the country's uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian rule. Now in its fifth month, the protests have been gaining momentum in defiance of the military crackdown.
Hama, a city of 800,000 with a history of dissent, had fallen largely out of government control since June as residents turned on the regime and blockaded the streets against encroaching tanks. But Syrian security forces backed by tanks and snipers launched a ferocious military offensive that left corpses in streets Sunday and sent residents fleeing for their lives, according to residents.
In 1982, Assad's father, Hafez Assad, ordered the military to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement there. Hama was sealed off and bombs dropped from above smashed swaths of the city and killed between 10,000 and 25,000 people, rights groups say.
In other parts of Syria, security forces killed at least seven protesters overnight when they went out to demonstrate after special nighttime prayers for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, activists said.
BEIRUT -- Syria's government proclaimed Friday that it was succeeding in crushing the uprising in the city of Hama, the epicenter of anti-regime protests, showing TV images of burned buildings and rubble-strewn streets. Under a suffocating siege, residents of the city warned that medical supplies were running out and food rotting after six days without electricity.
Across the country, tens of thousands of protesters marched through cities, chanting their solidarity with Hama and demanding the ouster of President Bashar Assad. They were met by security forces who opened fire, killing at least 13 people, activists said.
Their numbers were lower than previous Fridays, when hundreds of thousands nationwide turned out for protests likely because this was the first Friday in the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn until dusk and go outside less, particularly in the summer heat. That could augur disappointment for protest leaders, who had hoped to escalate the uprising during the month and even mark a turning point in the quest to topple the 40-year Assad family dynasty's rule.
Government forces began their siege on Hama on Sunday, cutting off electricity, phone services and internet and blocking supplies into the city of 800,000 as they shelled neighborhoods and sent in ground raids. It appeared to be an all-out attempt to take back the city which has a history of dissent after residents all but took over, barricading it against the regime. Rights group say at least 100 people have been killed so far while some estimates have put the number as high as 250.
The tolls could not be verified because of the difficulty reaching residents and hospital officials in the besieged city, where journalists are barred as they are throughout Syria.
Tanks shelled residential districts starting around 4 a.m. Friday, just as people were beginning their daily fast mirroring a round of bombardment the evening before at sunset when they were breaking the fast, one resident told The Associated Press.
"If people get wounded, it is almost impossible to take them to hospital," the resident said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Syrian state media on Friday proclaimed that army units are "working to restore security, stability and normal life to Hama" after it was taken over by "terrorists."
For the first time since the siege began, government-run TV and the state news agency aired images of ravaged streets in the city, strewn with debris, damaged vehicles and makeshift barricades set up by protesters. One image showed a yellow taxi with a dead man in the driver's seat and bloodstains on the door. A tank cleared away a large cement barrier and a bus with shattered windows.
There were no reports of protests in the city during the day Friday a contrast to previous weeks when hundreds of thousands in the city participated in the biggest marches in the country.
A citizen journalist from Hama working with Avaaz, an online global activist group with a network of activists inside Syria, told AP that people were now too afraid to go to the mosques, which were being targeted by the military.
The man who identified himself as Sami described the humanitarian situation as "catastrophic." Everything was closed, including bakeries and pharmacies, he said.
"There are sick people, people with diabetes who have run out of insulin ... the food has spoiled because there's no electricity," he said. "You cannot imagine how tired and terrified people are," he said.
Hama has seen government crackdowns before. In 1982, Assad's father, Hafez Assad, ordered the military to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement there. Hama was sealed off and bombs dropped from above smashed swaths of the city and killed between 10,000 and 25,000 people, rights groups say.
Although there has been a near-total communications blackout in Hama, witnesses have painted a grim picture of life in the city. "People are being slaughtered like sheep while walking in the street," a resident said Thursday, speaking by phone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
There were also fears of an intensified assault on a second city, the oil center of Deir el-Zour in the east, where tanks have been deployed at entrances since earlier this week. Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the London-based Observatory for Human Rights in Syria, said a quarter of the city's population of 600,000 have fled recently.
Friday has become the main day for protests in Syria, despite the near-certainty that tanks and snipers will respond with deadly force. Protests on Friday spread from the capital, Damascus, to the southern province of Daraa, the central city of Homs and in Qamishli, near the Turkish border. Some 20,000 people protested in Deir el-Zour, lower than the hundreds of thousands of previous weeks, likely due to the flight of a large part of the population.
Where is that prick, spineless empty-suit "president" we have?
It is like 1938 all over again - we have a chance to stop a holocaust, and this awful, fake regime right here in the US remains silent while thousands are arrested, tortured, and killed.
Is this how one "earns" a nobel prize - sit silently, doing NOTHING? Has obama no shame, no humanity?
What kind of person, let alone leader of the free world, remains completely invisible while the tanks of the ass-ad criminal dictatorship machine gun and shell unarmed civilians? What is he waiting for?
Where is that prick, spineless empty-suit "president" we have?
It is like 1938 all over again - we have a chance to stop a holocaust, and this awful, fake regime right here in the US remains silent while thousands are arrested, tortured, and killed.
Is this how one "earns" a nobel prize - sit silently, doing NOTHING? Has obama no shame, no humanity?
What kind of person, let alone leader of the free world, remains completely invisible while the tanks of the ass-ad criminal dictatorship machine gun and shell unarmed civilians? What is he waiting for?
BEIRUT -- Syria's defense minister was replaced Monday by the army chief of staff in the midst of a brutal military crackdown on a 5-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad, the state-run news agency said.
The SANA report said Gen. Ali Habib, the country's defense minister since 2009, was removed because of health problems. Assad appointed Gen. Dawoud Rajha as the new defense minister as part of a shake-up of a number of key posts, SANA said.
The army has played a key role in the crackdown on protesters, along with the security services and armed thugs known as shabiha. On Monday, the military renewed its assault on Deir el-Zour, unleashing artillery fire the eastern town, a day after at least 42 people were killed there.
The intensifying government crackdown has drawn sharp condemnation from abroad, and Arab nations joined the growing international chorus against Assad's regime Monday, with Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia pulling out their ambassadors.
The international community has imposed sanctions and demanded an immediate end to the attacks. France and Germany renewed their condemnation Monday.
But in a sign of growing outrage, Syria's Arab neighbors joined the mounting criticism, voicing their concerns about a crackdown that intensified on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan a time of introspection and piety characterized by a dawn-to-dusk fast.
Late Sunday, Saudi Arabia's king whose country does not tolerate dissent and lent its military troops to repress anti-government protests in neighboring Bahrain said he was recalling his ambassador in Damascus for consultations, and demanded "an end to the killing machine and bloodshed."
"Any sane Arab, Muslim or anyone else knows that this has nothing to do with religion, or ethics or morals; spilling the blood of the innocent for any reasons or pretext leads to no path," King Abdullah said in a statement.
Bahrain, a U.S. ally that hosts the Navy's 5th Fleet, recalled its ambassador to Syria "for consultation," Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa announced on his official Twitter feed Monday. Bahraini officials couldn't immediately be reached for further comment.
Bahrain has faced the Gulf's largest uprisings since the start of the Arab Spring. Its larger Gulf neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, sent in additional security forces to help Bahraini authorities put down widespread street protests under special emergency powers earlier this year.
Kuwait also recalled its ambassador to Syria, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheik Mohammad Sabah al-Salem Al Sabah said in a brief statement carried by the state news agency KUNA. He said Gulf foreign ministers planned to meet soon to discuss the situation in Syria.
In Deir el-Zour, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) east of the capital Damascus, machine-gun fire and artillery blasts resumed early Monday, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, which help organize the protests and track the uprising.
Deir el-Zour is in an oil-rich but largely impoverished region of Syria known for its well-armed clans and tribes whose ties extend across eastern Syrian and into Iraq. At least 42 people were killed Sunday in a pre-dawn raid, said Abdul-Karim Rihawi, the Damascus-based chief of the Syrian Human Rights League, and Ammar Qurabi, who heads the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
Syrian troops also stormed Maaret al-Numan in the northern province of Idlib at dawn, activists said.
"Forces entered the city from its eastern side and they are preventing the residents from entering or leaving the city," the LCC said in a statement.
More than 300 people have died in the past week, the bloodiest in the five-month uprising against Assad's authoritarian rule.
The government crackdown on mostly peaceful, unarmed protesters demanding political reforms and an end to the Assad family's 40-year rule has left more than 1,700 dead since March, according to activists and human rights groups. Assad's regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, which at times has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets.
So what do you suppose we do? we have our hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan not to mention bombing the pants off of the Libyans. We already have sanctions in place on Syria even though I do admit sanctions are pretty much useless against the people running the country, do you suggest we send troops in Syria, or bomb the shit out of it? I am heavily against both of these options.
So what do you suppose we do? we have our hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan not to mention bombing the pants off of the Libyans. We already have sanctions in place on Syria even though I do admit sanctions are pretty much useless against the people running the country, do you suggest we send troops in Syria, or bomb the shit out of it? I am heavily against both of these options.
NATO, with Turkey leading the way due to its proximity, historical ties to syria, etc., should bomb all military assets of the regime including weapons depots, tanks, aircraft, air force bases, etc., until their ability to conduct war against the civilian population is terminated.
There is no other option to save thousands more syrian lives.
