Middle East
'Dozens killed' in Syrian border town
Security forces killed at least 27 civilians in three-day attack on Tel Kelakh,
a rights lawyer told Al Jazeera.
Last Modified: 17 May 2011 23:19
Syria's army and security forces killed at least 27 civilians in a three-day
tank-backed attack on the border town of Tel Kelakh to subdue pro-democracy
protesters, a rights lawyer told Al Jazeera.
"There are 27 confirmed names. An unknown number of bodies were taken to the
main hospital in Tel Kelakh and not handed over to their families," Razan
Zaitouna said on Wednesday.
Tel Kelakh is a few kilometres from Lebanon's northern border with Syria.
On Tuesday, security agents violently dispersed university students protesting
against Bashar al-Assad, the president, in the country's second-largest city
Aleppo, a human rights activist said.
The AP news agency quoted Mustafa Osso as saying that dozens were injured after
the protesting students were attacked with batons on Tuesday.
He said many of the students were chased into their dormitories and badly
beaten. The university has seen several anti-regime demonstrations in the past
weeks.
Rights activists say a crackdown to crush a two-month wave of protests against
Assad has killed at least 700 civilians.
Syrian tanks also moved into a southern city on the Hauran Plain on Tuesday
after encircling it for three weeks, activists said.
Soldiers fired machineguns as tanks and armoured personnel carriers entered
Nawa, a city of 80,000 people 60km north of the town of Deraa, according to
activists from the region.
"The governor (of the province) had announced that the troops have the names of
180 wanted men in Nawa, but the arrests are arbitrary," one rights campaigner
said.
Crackdown continues
In Deraa, tanks remained in the streets after the old quarter was shelled into
submission last month and residents gave accounts of mass graves, which the
authorities denied.
The southern towns of Inkhil and Jassem also remained besieged, rights
campaigners said, adding that mass arrests continued in the Hauran Plain and
other regions of Syria.
To the north, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in the Damascus suburb of
Douma, Syria's second city Aleppo, and the town of Zabadani on the foothills of
the Anti-Lebanon mountains, Hama and the region of Deir al-Zor near the Iraqi
border.
Most were not large but significant given the severe security clampdown, rights
campaigners said.
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned of more pressure
on Syria if the crackdown against pro-democracy protests continues.
Clinton said that both the European Union and the United States - which have
already slapped sanctions on a number of senior Syrian officials but not on
president al-Assad - were planning more steps.
"We will be taking additional steps in the days ahead," Clinton said, saying
she agreed with Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, who told
reporters that the time for Syria to make changes was now.
Meanwhile, Syrian activists used Facebook to call for a general strike
throughout Syria on Wednesday to protest against the security crackdown.
One of the protesters' main Facebook pages, The Syrian Revolution 2011, had a
picture of a child saying "father, your participation in the strike is a
guarantee for my future".
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
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