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BEIRUT Syrian security forces searching for anti-government protesters raided houses in central Syria and made arrests, activists and residents said Wednesday.
The troops, backed by tanks and military vehicles, entered districts in Homs and Hama as part of efforts to crush five months of street protests against President Bashar Assad.
Wednesday's raids come a day after security forces killed seven people as thousands of protesters poured out of mosques and marched through cemeteries at the start of Eid al-Fitr, a holiday when Muslims traditionally visit graves and pray for the dead.
The three-day holiday, which started on Tuesday, comes at the end of Ramadan. The Muslim holy month has been marked by intensified military operations and a deadly crackdown in several Syrian flashpoint cities.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 473 people were killed during Ramadan, including 360 civilians and 113 members of the Syrian military and security forces. Among those killed, 25 were under 18 years of age, it said.
Twenty-eight others died under torture or in detention during the holy month, the group said.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network said security forces on Wednesday set on fire the homes of two activists in Houla, in the Homs province. They also threatened their families with arrest if the activists fail to turn themselves in, it said.
The Observatory said at least 16 people were arrested in Houla on Wednesday.
The activists also said the military carried out raids in districts in Hama. The military withdrew from Hama earlier this month following a weeklong military siege and military operations in the city, a hotbed of dissent against the regime.
Human rights groups said more than 2,000 civilians have been killed in the crackdown on the protest movement that erupted in mid-March.
Amnesty International said it believed that at least 88 people, 10 of them children, have died in detention in Syria during the past five months.
Some of the victims were as young as 13, it said Tuesday. It said that in recent years the annual number of deaths behind Syrian bars has been about five.
It was past 11 a.m., and Abdullah was finally waking up. The night before had gone late, he and his friends challenging and daring and fleeing from the feared mukhabarat, Syrias secret police, who for the past five months have been bent on crushing dissent here in Homs. With a few hours of sleep behind him, Abdullah rolled off his mattress and began tapping out details of their exploits on his laptop. The clashes had been fierce and lasted hours, past the muezzins call to prayer at dawn. We wont bow to anyone but God, the protesters declared. The mukhabarat replied with tear gas, buckshot and bullets. Hot was how Abdullah described it as he typed.
As safe houses go, the room he slept in was lavish. A wide-screen television shared space on the wall with framed Koranic verses, rendered in sloping gold script. The hot wind of the Syrian summer billowed the thick drapes like sails in a storm. There was a mattress for each of the four men, all in their 20s, who slept surrounded by their smartphones and laptops and satellite phones and speakers.
Abdullah, a 26-year-old computer engineer and pious Muslim, is a wanted man. He joined the first protest in Homs in March, and since then he has emerged as one of the dozen or so leaders of the youth resistance. His savvy with technology has made him a target for the police, and this was the fifth place he had slept in in less than a week. He hadnt been to his familys home in two months. Around his neck he wore a tiny toy penguin that was actually a thumb drive, which he treated like a talisman, occasionally squeezing it to make sure it was still there. I sat next to him on the mattress and watched as he traded messages with other activists on Skype, then updated a Facebook page that serves as an underground newspaper, then marked a Google Earth map of Homs with the spots of the latest unrest. If theres no Internet, Abdullah said, theres no life.
The other young men in the room began to stir. Abdullahs friend Iyad (last names of the activists will not be used, in order to protect their identities), brought in tea and emptied ashtrays. They all soon started talking with an excitement that belied the danger to which they have grown accustomed. By day, a measure of normal life unfolds in Homs: stores and government offices are open, and people go about their business. Checkpoints have proliferated, though, and the most active youth try to stay off the streets, worrying that they are easier to identity in the daylight. By night, they gather in scores, sometimes in the hundreds, in open defiance of the regime. In Iyads living room, they bragged about spreading nails in the streets to flatten the tires of security-force vehicles and described to me how they load onions into plastic pipes and fire them by igniting hair spray. When security forces surged toward one of their comrades, they shouted to him: Youve got 20 guys around you! Blow yourself up!
They just fled, Abdullah said, smiling as he recalled the security forces retreating in fear from the imaginary explosives.
The Syrian uprising began in mid-March in the hardscrabble town of Daraa, about 160 miles from here, after 15 teenagers were arrested for writing antigovernment graffiti on school walls. The teens were reportedly beaten, and some of them had their fingernails pulled out. Their mothers were threatened with rape. The revolt spread quickly from Daraa throughout the country and has become the most violent in the Arab uprising, rivaled only by Libya, but Libya was a civil war. More than 2,200 Syrians have been killed and thousands more arrested in the relentless government crackdown. Protests after Friday prayers have become ritual, and in response to them the military and security forces have assaulted many of Syrias largest cities Latakia, Homs, Hama, Deir al-Zour and, of course, Daraa the violence so pronounced that the United States and European countries have demanded President Bashar al-Assad end his 11-year reign.
Iyad, a young father who named his newborn daughter after Daraa, showed off a bandaged right knee that was grazed by a bullet. Abdullah pulled up a picture on his computer of one of Homss first martyrs, a 19-year-old named Amjad Zantah, who was killed during the governments attempts to crush the earliest protests in the city. Id been covering the uprising since its beginning, but the question that still eluded me was how the Syrian youth the shabab keep fighting in the face of such withering violence. How can laptops and cellphones and bags of nails and pipes that shoot onions be any match for one of the Arab worlds most fearsome police states? And how can an eclectic array of leftists, liberals, conservatives, nationalists, Islamists (themselves diverse) and the disgruntled and downtrodden prove unified enough to bring it down?
BEIRUT -- The U.S. Embassy in Syria said Tuesday that President Bashar Assad is not fooling anyone by blaming terrorists and thugs for the unrest in his country as security forces try to crush the uprising by unleashing a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 2,200 people in nearly six months.
In comments posted on the embassy's Facebook page, U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford said it was clear Assad's regime has no capacity for reform.
"Peaceful protesters are not 'terrorists,' and after all the evidence accumulated over the past six months, no one except the Syrian government and its supporters believes that the peaceful protesters here are," he wrote.
Ford's comments came the same day that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon leveled some of his strongest criticism yet at the Syrian regime, saying Assad must take "bold and decisive measures before it's too late."
The statements were a reflection of the exasperation felt by the international community at the relentless crackdown that the U.N. says has killed 2,200 people since March, when the Syrian uprising began.
Nearly six months on, the unrest has descended into a bloody stalemate with neither side willing to back down. Assad has sealed the country from foreign journalists and most international observers, insisting that foreigners are meddling in his country and serving an outside conspiracy to destabilize the nation.
Ban had won a pledge from Assad in a phone call in mid-August to end the violence, but the killings continued.
Ford acknowledged that security forces have been killed. The regime estimates around 400 have died.
"But the number of security service members killed is far, far lower than the number of unarmed civilians killed," he said. "No one in the international community accepts the justification from the Syrian government that those security service members' deaths justify the daily killings, beatings, extrajudicial detentions, torture and harassment of unarmed civilian protesters."
On Tuesday, security forces opened fire from a checkpoint near the restive central city of Homs, killing two people, including a 15-year-old boy, activists said. They also said five unidentified corpses, including that of a woman, also were found dumped around the city center.
A longtime political activist and resident of Homs said it was not clear if the killings had sectarian motives. "The situation is very tense, people are very scared," he told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The discovery in July of three corpses with their eyes gouged set off a sectarian killing spree that left 30 people dead. The opposition has long accused the president's minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble among the Sunni majority to blunt the growing enthusiasm for the uprising.
Government tanks, state security agents and plainclothes loyalist militiamen known as shabiha raided cities in northern and central Syria on Sunday, in what residents said was a manhunt for one of the highest-ranking officials yet to defect to the opposition. Activists reported 14 people killed Sunday by government forces seeking to crush the nearly six-month uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Most of the day's government attacks on civilians occurred in the cities of Hama, Homs and Idlib and the suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian capital, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria opposition coalition.
Residents in and around the northern city of Idlib and the central city of Hama said government forces had launched a massive manhunt for Adnan Mohammad Bakkour, the chief government prosecutor in Hama. Bakkour appeared in videos last week in which he said he had resigned because of a massive government campaign of killing and torture in Hama. The government responded that Bakkour had been kidnapped and forced to issue the statement.
The offensive in one town "has been one of the most barbaric I have ever heard of; tanks are on the streets trying to coerce residents to divulge information about Bakkour," said Moustafa, a farmer in Idlib, a city on the border with Turkey. He spoke on condition he not be identified further, for fear of retaliation.
Amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday showed tanks positioned in the narrow neighborhood streets of Idlib.
In the Bab Amr district of Homs, the lawyer's hometown, security forces stormed in, accompanied by plainclothes security forces.
BEIRUT -- Syrian security forces "forcibly removed" patients from a hospital and prevented doctors from reaching the wounded during a military siege in the restive central city of Homs this week, a leading human rights group said.
In a report released late Thursday, New York-based Human Rights Watch cited testimony from witnesses, including doctors. The report came as Syria was bracing for yet another day of anti-government protests Friday.
"Snatching wounded people from the operating room is inhumane and illegal, not to mention life-threatening," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Cutting people off from essential medical care causes grave suffering and perhaps irreparable harm."
Wednesday's military operation in Homs killed at least 20 people. It was among the most severe crackdowns on an urban center during the country's 6-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad. The U.N. estimates that some 2,200 people have been killed in the crackdown since March.
A doctor at the al-Barr said security forces seized some of the wounded from the hospital.
"When we tried to help the wounded who needed urgent medical care, the security forces pushed us back, saying these were criminals and rapists," the doctor told HRW. "They were beating the wounded as they moved them out of the hospital."
There have been other reports of security forces targeting hospitals and rounding up the wounded in Syria and in Bahrain, where there were widespread protests this year led by the country's Shiite majority against the long-ruling Sunni monarchy.
BEIRUT Syrian troops mounted deadly new raids against dissent Monday as President Bashar Assad's embattled regime won key support from longtime ally Russia, which said a U.N. resolution on Syria must not contain sanctions.
The U.N. said Monday that the death toll has reached at least 2,600 from the government's violent crackdown on protests over the past six months.
Although the crackdown has brought widespread international condemnation, Assad's authoritarian regime has the support of Russia and China, permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto powers.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday that Moscow believes any U.N. resolution on Syria must be aimed at both the government and the opposition.
"Russia proceeds from the assumption that it's necessary to approve a resolution on Syria that will be tough, but well balanced at the same time that would address both parties to the conflict President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition," Medvedev said. "Only in that case could it be successful."
"The resolution must be tough, but it mustn't automatically involve sanctions," he said. "There is absolutely no need now for any additional pressure."
Both Russia and China oppose a draft U.N. Security Council resolution backed by European nations and the United States that would impose an arms embargo and other sanctions on Syria. Moscow has introduced a rival resolution calling for Assad's government to halt its violence against protesters and expedite reforms.
The raids around the central city of Hama began after security forces cut all roads leading to the area along with electricity and telephone lines.
The death toll from Monday's raids around Hama and violence elsewhere was not immediately clear.
The activist network called the Local Coordination Committees said there were civilian casualties from Monday's raids but there was no exact figure.
Syria-based rights activist Mustafa Osso says at least five people were killed.
Another group, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said one person also was also killed in the Damascus suburb of Douma when security forces opened at a funeral.
Syrian protesters are increasingly calling for some sort of outside help although not necessarily military action like the NATO intervention that helped topple the Gadhafi regime in Libya. Instead, they are calling for observation missions and human rights monitors who could help deter attacks on civilians.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Monday that the new death toll of 2,600 is based on "reliable sources on the ground."
BEIRUT Syrian troops fired tear gas at a gathering of mourners just hours after U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and other Western diplomats expressed their condolences to the family of a rights advocate killed last week, activists said Wednesday.
The incident could increase already high tensions between Washington and Damascus, which has accused the United States of helping incite violence in Syria. Authorities have also criticized two earlier visits by Ford to the country's central and southern regions.
The Syrian regime is trying to crush a 6-month-old uprising with deadly force that has killed some 2,600 people, according to U.N. estimates.
Also Wednesday, Syrian troops conducted raids in the northwestern province of Idlib and the central region of Homs, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said one person was killed in Idlib and two others in the central province of Hama in Wednesday raids.
The violence came a day after more than 20 people were killed throughout Syria, according to the Observatory and Mustafa Osso, a Syria-based rights activist.
Osso and the Local Coordination Committees said the attack on mourners occurred on Tuesday night, after Ford and several other ambassadors had left the gathering in the Damascus suburb of Daraya.
Osso said troops fired tear gas at the tent with mourners and relatives of Ghayath Mattar but no one was hurt.
Mattar was detained on Sept. 6 and his body was returned to his family over the weekend.
A U.S. embassy official confirmed Ford's visit, saying he was accompanied by other diplomats. An amateur video posted on YouTube showed Ford and several other Westerners at a gathering as verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book, blared from loudspeakers.
Another video showed the half dozen diplomats heading from the gathering to their cars as residents chanted, "the people want the president (Assad) executed." Another man shouted to them, "welcome, welcome to Syria."
According to captions on amateur videos posted by activists, the French and Japanese ambassadors to Syria were among the visiting diplomats.
Last month, President Barack Obama demanded Syrian President Bashar Assad resign because he had lost legitimacy as a ruler. Major U.S. allies such as Britain, France, Germany and the European Union have made similar moves.
Washington and the EU have also imposed sanctions on some Syrian officials because of Assad's crackdown.
A trip in July by the U.S. and French ambassadors to the central city of Hama to express support for protesters drew swift condemnation from the Syrian government, which said the unauthorized visits were proof that Washington was inciting violence in the Arab nation. Authorities then warned both ambassadors not to travel outside the capital without permission.
ISTANBUL A group of Syrian opposition activists announced Thursday the creation of a council designed to present a united front against President Bashar Assad's regime, which has waged a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters during the past six months.
The Syrian opposition consists of a variety of groups with often differing ideologies, including Islamists and secularists, and there have been many meetings of dissidents who say they represent the opposition. But activists said the new "Syrian National Council," formed during a meeting in Turkey, is the most serious initiative aimed at bringing revolutionary forces together.
It groups some 140 opposition figures, including exiled opponents and 70 dissidents inside Syria, said Bassma Kodmani, a Paris-based academic. Kodmani added that the council "categorically opposes" any foreign intervention or military operations to bring down Assad's regime.
"We are in agreement over the peaceful nature of the revolution," she said.
A popular uprising began in Syria in mid-March, amid a wave of anti-government protests in the Arab world that have already toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Assad has reacted with deadly force that the U.N. estimates has left some 2,600 people dead.
The meeting in Istanbul took place as Syrian troops carried out raids in the suburbs of the capital Damascus, the central province of Homs and the northwestern region of Idlib that borders Turkey, activists said.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one person was killed and five were wounded when security forces opened fire during raids in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani. The group said a paramedic who was wounded last week also died in hospital on Thursday.
The new opposition council aims to "convey the Syrian people's just problems on the international platform, to form a pluralist and democratic state," a statement said. It also hopes to bring down the "leadership that is ruling through dictatorship, and to unite the prominent politicians under one umbrella."
The reason it took so long to form the council is that "we wanted to make sure everyone was on board," said Adib Shishakli, an opposition member based in Saudi Arabia. Shishakli said the council would elect a leader at a later time.
Ahmad Ramadan, another opposition member, said the council would form 10 bureaus, including a foreign relations office dedicated to "relaying the demands of the revolution, the people's requests to the outside world." He said it would also work to form a television station to help overthrow the regime.
Louay Safi, a U.S.-based academic, said the council is broad-based and includes Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is "open to everyone unless they are against democracy," he said.
The emphasis on unity comes amid fears of civil war between Assad's ruling minority Alawite sect and the country's Sunni Muslim majority.
Also Thursday, Syrian state TV aired excerpts of a video showing army Lt. Col. Hussein Harmoush, one of the first officers to defect after the uprising began. The pro-government daily Al-Watan said he was detained during "a special operation" in Idlib.
Harmoush, of the so-called Free Officers Movement, has previously appeared in videos calling on the army to stand by the people instead of the regime.
Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he dreamed that one day young Syrians will have the same opportunity as young Libyans have for democracy. He made his remarks from Tripoli during his first official visit to Libya since rebels ousted dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
"The best I can do is dedicate my visit here in hopes that everyone in Syria also benefits," he said.
In France, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Syrian opposition members are meeting in Paris with French officials on Thursday and Friday, though he did not identify the figures or elaborate on the meetings.
BEIRUT Syrian security forces moved against several schools around the country Wednesday and detained students who demonstrated against President Bashar Assad's regime, while troops shot dead at least four people in central Syria, activists said.
The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said dozens of students were detained in the southern village of Jassem. Also, security forces surrounded several schools in the Damascus suburbs of Harasta, Arbeen and Zamalka.
Students have been demonstrating against Assad's regime since Sunday, the first day of the school year.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed three civilians in the central city of Homs and one in the nearby town of Rastan.
It reported that the bodies of three other people who disappeared last week were also either found or handed to their families by authorities in the northern province of Idlib and the central region of Hama.
President Barack Obama called on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Syria because of the deadly crackdown. He told the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday, "There is no excuse for inaction."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is considering sanctions and is coordinating its policy with the U.S. Turkey neighbors Syria and is a key trading partner. Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying. "We never wanted things to arrive at this point, but unfortunately, the Syrian administration has forced us to take such a decision."
The Syrian uprising began in mid-March, during the wave of protests in the Arab world that toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. President Bashar Assad has responded with a brutal crackdown that the U.N. estimates has killed some 2,600 people.
BEIRUT -- An 18-year-old Syrian woman whose mutilated body was discovered in a morgue is believed to be the first female to die in custody during the country's 6-month-old uprising, Amnesty International said Friday.
The family of Zainab al-Hosni found her corpse by chance as they searched for her activist brother's body in the restive city of Homs, the New York-based rights group said. The family said she had been decapitated, her arms cut off, and skin removed.
"If it is confirmed that Zainab was in custody when she died, this would be one of the most disturbing cases of a death in detention we have seen so far," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Amnesty said Zainab was abducted by plainclothes individuals believed to be members of the security forces on July 27, apparently to pressure her activist brother Mohammad Deeb al-Hosni to turn himself in.
The deaths of Zainab and her brother bring to 103 the number of people who have been reported killed in Syrian custody since the uprising began in March, Amnesty said.
Overall, the U.N. estimates 2,600 people have been killed since the revolt began in March, and there is no sign of either side giving up.
The protest movement has proved remarkably resilient, although the opposition has no clear leadership that could offer an alternative to President Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.
On Friday, Syrian security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters calling for the opposition to unite against Assad's regime. Friday protests have become a weekly ritual in Syria, despite the near-certainty that security forces will respond with bullets and tear gas.
The protests came as the European Union agreed on an investment ban in the Syrian oil sector to put more pressure on Assad to end his deadly crackdown.
BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian troops firing machine guns mounted on tanks stormed a rebellious town in central Syria before dawn Tuesday as part of military operations aimed at crushing the six-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad, activists said.
The offensive in Rastan, located just north of the central city of Homs and on the highway to Turkey, began overnight and continued through the morning, leaving at least 20 people wounded, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Rastan has emerged as a hotbed of dissent against Assad's autocratic regime during six months of anti-government protests, and alleged army deserters have frequently clashed there with the military and security forces in the past.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network, the Observatory, and other groups reported Tuesday's attacks in Rastan. They said the tanks and armored vehicles entered Rastan early Tuesday and dozens of troops have deployed on the town's streets.
The United Nations estimates that more than 2,700 civilians have been killed in the government's crackdown on the uprising that began in mid-March, inspired by the Arab revolutions that have toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
The Syrian government's bloody crackdown has prompted the international community, including the United States and European nations, to impose stiff sanctions on the regime.
Assad insists the unrest is being driven by terrorists and Islamic extremists acting out a foreign conspiracy to fracture Syria.
Ignoring the mounting death toll from his government's bloody crackdown, Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the United Nations Monday that external critics were to blame for the violence and for causing delays in Assad's plans for democratic reforms.
BEIRUT -- While Syrian protesters and security forces are engaged in a war of attrition on the ground, a different kind of battle is emerging online.
Pro- and anti-government activists in Syria are increasingly turning to the Internet, hacking and defacing websites in an attempt to win a public relations victory.
Shadowy online activist groups have hacked into at least 12 Syrian government websites in recent days, replacing their content with interactive maps and statements detailing atrocities by security forces against protesters.
The groups say their actions are in response to the regime's tactics.
Since early in the uprising, a group of pro-government hackers known as the Syrian Electronic Army has used the Internet to attack opposition activists and their perceived backers, flooding Facebook and other social networking sites with pro-regime messages like 'I love Bashar' or other. often threatening, statements.
On Monday, pro-Assad hackers briefly defaced Harvard University's website, replacing the home page with an image of Assad together with a message accusing the U.S. of supporting the uprising against him and threatening retaliation.
The hackers posted a message claiming "Syrian Electronic Army were here."
Harvard spokesman John Longrake said the attack appeared to be the work of "a sophisticated individual or group."
Other websites or Facebook pages reportedly targeted by the group include those of Oprah Winfrey, Newsweek magazine and Brad Pitt. Pitt's partner, Angelina Jolie, is a U.N. goodwill ambassador who visited thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey in June.
"The Syrian Electronic Army has been trying to root out prominent activists in Syria and recent evidence suggests it has begun waging cyber-war against entities from countries that oppose the regime," said Anthony Skinner, associate director at Maplecroft, a British-based risk analysis company.
The Syrian Electronic Army claims on its Facebook page that it has no affiliation with the Assad regime and was founded by ordinary Syrians who want to defend the country against "fabrications and distortions of events in Syria."
But anti-government activists say they are certain the group was formed by Syrian intelligence agents and die-hard Assad supporters and volunteers.
Assad praised their efforts in a speech in June in which he lauded the role of young people in the effort, describing the group as a "real army in a virtual reality."
The group's actions were damaging at first, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, a grass roots anti-government activist group. But the impact of the online attacks has been limited since counterattacks were launched by the hacker group Anonymous as well as two other loose groupings of hackers made up mostly of Syrian activists, the so-called Free Hackers Union and RevoluSec.
"It is an electronic war. It's legitimate. As long as it isn't hurting anyone, we are ready to wage it until the end," Idilbi said.
He said the difference between the tactics of anti-government hackers and the Syria Electronic Army was that the latter publishes threats against anti-government activists along with their phone numbers and addresses, putting their lives in danger.
RevoluSec and Anonymous said Monday they were behind the latest attacks targeting the websites of several Syrian government ministries and some major Syrian cities.
The activists said they replaced the websites with caricatures of Assad and messages that read: "Don't let Bashar monitor you online."
They also published interactive maps detailing casualty figures since the start of the uprising.
Skinner said Monday's hacking shows that the Syrian government has not erected sufficient defensive safeguards, despite reported training from its ally Iran on how to deal with the protest movement and mounting a sophisticated response.
Proposals mooted for immediate sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad's government have been dropped from a new draft UN resolution on Syria.
The document, championed by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal and supported by the US last month, has been scaled-back in the hope of securing the agreement of China and Russia.
Last month the EU proposed blocking the delivery of banknotes to Damascus and imposing travel bans on officials linked to the regime. However, China and Russia have opposed sanctions and intervention in Syria at the UN, and threaten to veto any such proposals against Assad's regime.
The new draft resolution still "demands an immediate end to all violence", but will now only threaten sanctions "in the event that Syria has not complied with this resolution, to adopt targeted measures, including sanctions". A vote on the draft is expected in the next week.
The push for a resolution comes against the backdrop of a deteriorating situation in Syria. The UN high commissioner for human rights said last week that more than 2,700 people have been killed since Syria's violent crackdown on dissent began.
On Wednesday, Alistair Burt, Minister for the Middle East expressed his deep concern at the government's military campaign against its citizens in the city of Rastan:
Syrian troops, firing machine-guns and backed by helicopters and tanks, have been besieging that city. If ever there was a stark reminder that the UN must take further action, this is it.
BEIRUT Supporters of President Bashar Assad stoned the convoy of the U.S. ambassador to Syria as he arrived for a meeting with a leading opposition figure on Thursday, then pelted him with eggs and tomatoes and tried to break into the building while he was inside, the opposition activist and a U.S. official said. The American envoy was trapped in the office for three hours by the angry mob outside.
Ambassador Robert Ford, an outspoken critic of Assad's crackdown on the 6-month-old anti-government uprising, was unharmed and eventually escorted out by Syrian security forces, who showed up more than an hour after the attack began. He was meeting with Hassan Abdul-Azim, who heads the outlawed Arab Socialist Democratic Union party.
"Now that security forces are here, I believe his life is not in danger," Abdul-Azim told The Associated Press.
Ford has angered the Syrian regime in past months by visiting a couple of the protest centers outside of Damascus in a show of solidarity with the anti-government uprising. The latest incident could further raise tensions between Washington and Damascus, which has accused the United States of helping incite violence in Syria. In August, President Barack Obama demanded Assad resign, saying he had lost his legitimacy as a ruler.
"A crowd of demonstrators tried to assault Ambassador Ford and embassy colleagues today as they went about doing the normal work of any embassy," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington. He said the ambassador went to a meeting with "a well-known Syrian political figure," adding that Ford and his staff were back safe at the U.S. Embassy.
"The mob was violent. It tried, unsuccessfully, to attack embassy personnel while they were inside several embassy vehicles, seriously damaging the vehicles in the process," said Toner. "Syrian security officers finally assisted in securing a path from the ambassador's meeting for him and his aides back to the embassy."
Syria's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. Embassy informed the ministry that Ford was confronted by protesters when he visited Abdul-Azim. The statement added that the ministry immediately contacted security authorities, who "took all measures needed to protect the ambassador and his team and secured their return to their work in accordance with Syria's international commitments."
Abdul-Azim said Ford was inside his office when the Assad supporters tried to force their way in, breaking some door locks. Office staff prevented them from rushing in, but the ambassador was trapped inside for about three hours by the hostile pro-government protesters outside.
University student Majd Mutlaq, 21, stood outside Abdul-Azim's office with a bag of eggs and tomatoes, saying he came after he heard the ambassador was inside the building.
"We don't want him anywhere in Syria and if I ever see him, I will throw at him whatever I am carrying," he said.
The attack on Ford came five days after government supporters threw eggs and stones at France's ambassador as he left a meeting in Damascus with a Greek Orthodox patriarch. Ambassador Eric Chevallier was unharmed.
Robert Ford, U.S. Ambassador To Syria, Pelted With Tomatoes
BEIRUT Supporters of President Bashar Assad stoned the convoy of the U.S. ambassador to Syria as he arrived for a meeting with a leading opposition figure on Thursday, then pelted him with eggs and tomatoes and tried to break into the building while he was inside, the opposition activist and a U.S. official said. The American envoy was trapped in the office for three hours by the angry mob outside.
Ambassador Robert Ford, an outspoken critic of Assad's crackdown on the 6-month-old anti-government uprising, was unharmed and eventually escorted out by Syrian security forces, who showed up more than an hour after the attack began. He was meeting with Hassan Abdul-Azim, who heads the outlawed Arab Socialist Democratic Union party.
"Now that security forces are here, I believe his life is not in danger," Abdul-Azim told The Associated Press.
Ford has angered the Syrian regime in past months by visiting a couple of the protest centers outside of Damascus in a show of solidarity with the anti-government uprising. The latest incident could further raise tensions between Washington and Damascus, which has accused the United States of helping incite violence in Syria. In August, President Barack Obama demanded Assad resign, saying he had lost his legitimacy as a ruler.
"A crowd of demonstrators tried to assault Ambassador Ford and embassy colleagues today as they went about doing the normal work of any embassy," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington. He said the ambassador went to a meeting with "a well-known Syrian political figure," adding that Ford and his staff were back safe at the U.S. Embassy.
"The mob was violent. It tried, unsuccessfully, to attack embassy personnel while they were inside several embassy vehicles, seriously damaging the vehicles in the process," said Toner. "Syrian security officers finally assisted in securing a path from the ambassador's meeting for him and his aides back to the embassy."
Syria's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. Embassy informed the ministry that Ford was confronted by protesters when he visited Abdul-Azim. The statement added that the ministry immediately contacted security authorities, who "took all measures needed to protect the ambassador and his team and secured their return to their work in accordance with Syria's international commitments."
Abdul-Azim said Ford was inside his office when the Assad supporters tried to force their way in, breaking some door locks. Office staff prevented them from rushing in, but the ambassador was trapped inside for about three hours by the hostile pro-government protesters outside.
University student Majd Mutlaq, 21, stood outside Abdul-Azim's office with a bag of eggs and tomatoes, saying he came after he heard the ambassador was inside the building.
"We don't want him anywhere in Syria and if I ever see him, I will throw at him whatever I am carrying," he said.
The attack on Ford came five days after government supporters threw eggs and stones at France's ambassador as he left a meeting in Damascus with a Greek Orthodox patriarch. Ambassador Eric Chevallier was unharmed.
Robert Ford, U.S. Ambassador To Syria, Pelted With Tomatoes
The appointment comes almost six years after Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus, Margaret Scobey, in the wake of the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in a car bomb in Beirut...
The appointment of Ford "shows that President Obama wants to work with Syria even if we don't agree on every issue," a US embassy source said.
It should be noted, however, that Syria is not only culpable for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, it is also to blame for many of the bombing attacks currently plaguing Iraq, including today's attack:
More Obama organizing from his back side as had he not recommended and appointed Robert Ford Ambassador to Syria when Congress was in recess, he would not have been approved.
We are lucky they did not use bombs! Until Obama's machinations with appointing Ford, we had not had an ambassador to Syria since 2005.
Sheesh! What kind of politicking is going on with Obama? Maybe making nice?
The appointment comes almost six years after Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus, Margaret Scobey, in the wake of the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in a car bomb in Beirut...
The appointment of Ford "shows that President Obama wants to work with Syria even if we don't agree on every issue," a US embassy source said.
It should be noted, however, that Syria is not only culpable for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, it is also to blame for many of the bombing attacks currently plaguing Iraq, including today's attack:
Yes, Obama making nice with terrorists.
The Obama Report
BEIRUT Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters Friday killing at least six people as thousands rallied across the country to call for the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime, activists said. Troops also clashed with armed anti-regime forces in central regions for a third straight day.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said six people were killed in the central cities of Hama and Homs as well as the central town of Rastan, where the clashes between troops and army defectors has been raging for days. Syria-based rights activist Mustafa Osso put the death toll at 11.
It was impossible to resolve the discrepancy or to independently verify the death toll.
The protests spread from the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs to the southern province of Daraa, the northwestern province of Idlib as well as Hama and Homs.
Many of the protesters expressed solidarity with residents of the rebellious town of Rastan just north of Homs.
Amateur videos posted online by activists showed thousands of people shouting in support of the rebellion in Rastan, where fighting continued Friday.
"Rastan will overthrow the regime," read one banner waved by protesters in the Damascus neighborhood of Qadam. Many of the protesters there covered their faces with scarves or masks to hide their identities.
The Syrian government has banned foreign journalists and placed heavy restrictions on local media coverage, making it difficult to independently verify events on the ground.
The U.N. says some 2,700 people have already died in the government crackdown against the uprising that began in mid-March.
The protests on Friday followed the week's main Muslim prayer services and were similar to demonstrations held across Syria every Friday for the past six months since the uprising against Assad erupted in the country's south.
A military official said Friday that two days of clashes between Syrian troops and anti-Assad forces in Rastan killed seven soldiers and policemen.
The official said 32 Syrian troops were also wounded in the fighting as government forces conducted a "qualitative" operation on Thursday and Friday in an effort to crush "gunmen" holed up inside the town.
The government describes its armed opponents there as "terrorist armed groups," not army defectors.
The official said the gunmen had terrorized citizens, blocked roads and set up barriers and explosives, and were responsible for the deaths of the seven troops. The comments by the unidentified official were carried by state-run news agency, SANA, on Friday.
Rastan has witnessed some of the fiercest fighting in the six-month uprising against Assad, pitting the military against hundreds of army defectors, according to activists.
The town, from which the Syrian army draws many of its Sunni Muslim recruits, has seen some of the largest numbers of defections to date. A prominent human rights activist estimated there were around 2,000 defectors fighting in Rastan and nearby Talbiseh as well as in the Jabal al-Zawiyah region in the northern Idlib province.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The defectors, as well as reports that once-peaceful Syrian protesters are increasingly taking up arms to fight the six-month old government crackdown, have raised concerns of the risk of civil war in Syria.
BEIRUT Syrian troops going house to house have detained more than 3,000 people in the past three days in a rebellious town that government forces recently retook in some of the worst fighting of the 6-month-old uprising, activists said Monday.
The activist group Local Coordination Committees said fighting has stopped in the central town of Rastan, which the government retook Saturday. The military operation there left dozens dead and more than 3,000 in custody, the group said.
A Rastan-based activist confirmed the number, telling The Associated Press by telephone that the detainees are being held at a cement factory, as well as some schools and the Sports Club, a massive, four-story compound.
"Ten of my relatives have been detained," said the activist, who asked that he be identified only by his first name, Hassan, for fear of retaliation. He said was he speaking from hiding in Rastan.
"The situation in the town is miserable," he said, adding that the population of some 70,000 was heavily bombed for five days starting Tuesday when the army launched an offensive.
Syrian activists say the fighting in Rastan pitted the Syrian military against hundreds of army defectors who sided with the anti-regime protesters calling for President Bashar Assad's ouster. The clashes in Rastan were among the worst the country has seen since the uprising began in mid-March and raised fears Syria is sliding toward a Libyan-style civil war.
Rami Abdel-Rahman, who heads the London-based Syrian Human Rights Organization, said many people have been arrested in Rastan, but the numbers are difficult to confirm. He said the number could be between 500 and 2,000.
Communications with Rastan have been cut for the past few days and were spotty Monday. The Syrian government has banned foreign journalists and placed heavy restrictions on local media coverage, making it difficult to independently verify events on the ground.
Hassan said that as of Sunday, the regime brought thousands of workers to Rastan to clean the streets and rebuild damaged areas in what appeared to be an attempt to cover the damage caused by intense shelling. He added that food was also brought into the town.
Syrian state-media said troops took control of Rastan after hunting down "armed terrorists" holed up inside. But the fighting there highlighted the increasingly militarized nature of an uprising started months ago by peaceful protesters.
The uprising began in mid-March amid a wave of anti-government protests in the Arab world that have so far toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Assad has reacted with deadly force that the U.N. estimates has left some 2,700 people dead.
Also Monday, funeral processions were held for the 21-year-old son of Syria's top Sunni Muslim cleric, who was killed a day earlier in an ambush in a restive northern area.
The cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, is considered a loyal supporter of Assad's regime. He told hundreds attending the funeral at a mosque in the northern city of Aleppo that the opposition should stop working against Syria from abroad.
"Come and say whatever you want here and if anyone rejects it, I will be with you in the opposition," said Hassoun, his voice shaking, in an apparent reference to steps taken by Assad to allow the formation of political parties and promises of free elections. "You want freedom, you want justice? Then come here and build it with us in Syria."
Hassoun, who has echoed regime claims that the unrest is the result of a foreign conspiracy, blamed fatwas or religious edicts by clerics living abroad for the death of his son. He did not name the clerics or say where they were based.
"My brothers who were misguided and carried arms, you should have assassinated me because some clerics issued such fatwas. Why did you kill a young man who did nothing and harmed no one," Hassoun, holding back his tears, said in a sermon aired on Syrian TV stations.
In other developments, a member of Syria's outgoing parliament dismissed a broad-based national council set up by the opposition, saying it will not be able to overthrow Assad's regime. Khaled Abboud told the AP that those who announced the formation of the council in Istanbul a day earlier are "deluding themselves."
Syrian dissidents met in Istanbul Sunday and formally established a national council designed to overthrow Assad's regime, which they accused of pushing the country to the brink of civil war. The council appeared to be the most serious step yet to unify a deeply fragmented dissident movement, and many Syrians in the southern and central regions of the country took to the streets in celebration, singing and dancing.
Abboud dismissed the opposition move, saying: "It's a dream that will never come true."
