Gunfire reported as troops round up govt opponents
By the 09/05/2011 - 12:30
Gunfire was heard Monday in a Damascus suburb as Syrian forces rounded up
activists amid an escalated crackdown on anti-government protests across the
country. Hundreds have been detained in Banias alone, according to human rights
groups.
AFP - Gunfire rang out in a suburb of Damascus Monday as Syrian troops carried
out arrests of opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in the coastal town of
Banias and other protest hubs, activists said.
One activist, declining to be named for security reasons, said that telephone
lines to Muadamiya in western Damascus were cut while a witness said the main
road to the Damascus suburb had been sealed off.
The source of the gunfire could not immediately be determined.
Amid sweeping arrests of regime opponents, more than 300 people have been
rounded up in Banias, based on house-to-house searches using lists of suspects,
according to Syrian human rights groups.
"Banias is cut off from the outside world," one activist said.
Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, said water, electricity and telephone lines have been cut off in
Banias, in northwestern Syria on the Mediterranean coast.
The military said on Sunday that six soldiers, including three officers, were
killed in clashes as the army pursued "armed terrorist groups" in Homs, Banias
and around the southern town of Daraa -- three protest hubs.
Tanks rumbled into several districts of the central industrial city of Homs and
deployed along the corniche in Banias overnight Saturday-Sunday, according to
activists.
The military cut electricity and communications before entering several Homs
districts that are home to opponents of Assad's regime, an activist said.
Gunfire reverberated in Bab Baba and Sebaa Amr, two districts in the city of
one million inhabitants that has been the scene of almost daily demonstrations
since anti-regime protests in Syria erupted in mid-March.
Among those arrested in Banias were protest leaders and doctors at a hospital
which was circled by the military, the Syrian Observatory said in a statement
on Sunday.
Assad, quoted on Monday in Al-Watan newspaper which is close to the government,
vowed to press ahead with reforms and forecast the political crisis in Syria
was nearing an end.
"The crisis will pass and end, and the question of administrative, political
and press reforms will advance," he was quoted as telling a delegation of
residents of Syria's main port city of Latakia, north of Banias.
He stressed the need "to consolidate national unity because the nation is the
mother of all of us and we need to unite in the face of this plot," referring
to Syrian official charges of terrorist gangs and foreign hands behind the
unrest.
A 12-year-old boy was among several people killed in Homs on Sunday as Syrian
troops hunted down the president's opponents, activists said, despite world
anger over the bloody crackdown.
A video posted online at YouTube -- which could not be authenticated -- showed
around 20 truckloads of soldiers heading towards a Homs district on Saturday
night.
Qassem Zuheir al-Ahmad, 12, was killed by gunfire in the city, where other
people also died, said an activist who was unable to specify who shot the boy
or give an overall casualty toll.
Al-Watan said the army had also been locked "in a fierce battle against groups
using heavy weapons, anti-tank rockets and machine guns" in and around Banias
since Friday night.
At least six people were killed in the city on Saturday, four of them women who
were protesting for the release of prisoners taken by security forces, an
activist said.
The military launched its action in Banias and Homs after ending a 10-day
lockdown in which dozens were killed and scores detained in Daraa.
On Sunday, a military spokesman said "units of the army and security forces
continue to pursue armed terrorist groups... in Homs, Banias and the outskirts
of Daraa," the state news agency SANA reported.
SANA also reported that Syrian 10 labourers returning home from Lebanon were
killed in an ambush at dawn on Sunday near Homs.
A member of Syria's banned Socialist Union party told AFP in Beirut he had fled
his home outside Damascus after being told by other activists that he would be
arrested. "Our society is dominated by fear," said Mujab Assamara, 33.
Rights groups say more than 600 people have been killed and 8,000 jailed or
gone missing in the eight-week crackdown on protesters. The Committee of the
Martyrs of the 15 March Revolution puts the death toll at 708.
The United States has warned it would take "additional steps" against Syria if
it continues its deadly crackdown while the European Union decided on Friday to
impose sanctions on 13 Syrian officials.
Source URL:
http://www.france24.com/en/20110509-gunfire-reported-syrian-forces-arrests-government-opponents-assad-damascus
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