Syria hits protest hubs

* Published: 11/05/2011 at 08:31 PM
* Online news:

Shells and gunfire rocked the anti-regime protest hub city of Homs on Wednesday as the army hunted down more dissidents in the flashpoint town of Banias, activists said.

A picture issued by the Syrian Arab news Agency on Sunday shows the funeral of Syrian policeman Mohammed Ali Saqa in Mushrifa village in the Homs region as troops hunted opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in Homs and Banias, activists said. Shelling and automatic gunfire Wednesday rocked the city of Homs, a hub of anti-regime protests in central Syria, a human rights activist says.

Meanwhile the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the 27-member bloc will look at fresh sanctions this week against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime after already honing in on his inner circle.

"Shelling and automatic gunfire could be heard early Wednesday in the (Homs) neighbourhood of Bab Amr and in nearby villages, Mashada, Jobar and Sultanya," human rights activist Najati Tayara told AFP.

He said that the villages, with a combined population of some 100,000 inhabitants -- many of them Bedouins -- have been the target of a security operation since Monday.

The Syrian army had swept the agricultural area searching for weapons and spreading fear among the population, he said.

"This operation terrified residents and security agents took part in looting," Tayara said, adding that 50 tanks rolled into the Sittin neighbourhood in the central city of Homs on Wednesday.

"Checkpoints were in place at the entrances of Homs," he added.

The Syrian army kept up its security sweep of the flashpoint coastal city of Banias, scouting for "protest organisers yet to be arrested," said Rami Abdul Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"A tank has been stationed since Tuesday night on the square where Banias demonstrations are held," he said, adding that the northern port remained encircled by the army after weekend arrests put some 450 people behind bars.

He said that 270 individuals who were released after the arrest campaign had "signed an agreement to stop demonstrating" while many of them reported being "struck violently and insulted" by security forces during their detention.

In a bid to snuff anti-regime protests, the Syrian army has deployed its tanks to several protest hubs and unleashed a wave of arrests focused on dissidents and protest organisers, local human rights activists said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, urged the Syrian president, in power since 2000, to refrain from using excessive force.

"I urge again President Assad to heed calls for reform and freedom and to desists from excessive force and mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators," Ban told journalists in Geneva.

His comments came after activists said Syrian forces had tightened the noose on key protest hubs on Tuesday, including Banias, sealing off neighbourhoods and arresting dissident leaders.

Security forces rounded up regime opponents at dawn Tuesday in the key Mediterranean port of Latakia, in Damascus and in Idlib, northwest of the capital, another activist said.

And in the northern, mostly Kurdish regions of Qamishli, Derbassiye and Amuda, residents were summoned and told to sign statements pledging not to take part in demonstrations, activist Radif Mustafa said.

For almost two months, near-daily protests have railed against Assad's regime, while troops and security forces have repressed the uprising brutally.

Between 600 and 700 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the start of the protest movement in mid-March, rights groups say.

EU sanctions against the regime took effect on Tuesday, with the president spared but his younger brother heading a list of 13 officials targeted for their involvement in the brutal crackdown.

EU diplomacy chief Ashton said on Wednesday the European Union will mull new sanctions in the coming days and they could also target the embattled Syrian president.

Pressed by members of the European Parliament to explain why Assad's name was not on the list of 13 Syrian officials, Ashton said "we started with 13 people who were directly involved" in cracking down on protests.

"We'll look at it again this week," she added.

"I assure you that my intention is to put the maximum political pressure that we can on Syria."

Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit said: "There will be a solution in Syria only once Assad has quit office in Syria, so it's clear that Assad and his entire family must be put on the list not tomorrow, but today."

Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to the Syrian president, told The New York Times she believes the worst is over and that she hoped "we are witnessing the end of the story."