WarSclerotic

Syrian Army Storms Town Where Uprising Began – NYTimes.com.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian army deployed tanks into the restive city of Dara’a in southern Syria and carried out arrests in poor towns on the capital’s outskirts Monday in a sharp escalation of a crackdown on Syria’s five-week-old uprising, according to human rights activists and accounts posted on social networking sites. They said at least five people were killed in Dara’a and bodies were in the streets.

The move into Dara’a seemed to signal a new chapter in a crackdown that has already killed more than 350 people, with the single highest toll on Friday. So far hewing to a mix of promised concessions and blunt force, the government indicated Monday that it had chosen the latter, seeking to crush a wave of dissent in virtually every Syrian province that has shaken the once-uncontested rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Residents said at least eight tanks entered Dara’a at dawn from four directions, and there were reports of artillery and mortars being used. Phone lines were cut to the area, making first-hand accounts difficult, and nearby border crossings with Jordan were reportedly sealed. But video smuggled out of the town showed a cloud of black smoke rising on the horizon and volleys of heavy gunfire echoing in the distance.

Protesters said the toll was almost sure to rise. Bodies were in the streets, but snipers on rooftops prevented residents and medical personnel from retrieving them.

“The army forces have invaded the city of Dara’a,” one resident said breathlessly as he filmed footage Monday morning. “They are heading toward the center of the city.”

Other smuggled footage showed heavily armed soldiers taking up positions behind walls, a few feet away from a tank parked in what appeared to be a leafy, main street. Witnesses quoted by organizers said some tanks were moving toward the Omari Mosque, a landmark there that has served as a headquarters of sorts for demonstrators.

“God is great, Bashar,” one protester cried on video posted on the Internet, addressing President Bashar al-Assad by his first name. “Why are you attacking us?”

The town of low-slung buildings and about 75,000 inhabitants has become almost synonymous with the revolt, which has posed the greatest challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family. Protests erupted there in March after security forces arrested a group of high school students accused of scrawling anti-government graffiti on a wall, galvanizing demonstrations that have spread to virtually every province in Syria.

Other activists said Syrian security forces also entered two towns on the capital’s outskirts – Douma and Maadamiah – carrying out dozens of arrests. Clashes have been especially pronounced in the poor, restive towns that encircle Damascus, and activists said there were reports of shooting during the raids that began Monday morning there.

Residents reported that security forces had surrounded the towns on Sunday. Anyone leaving or entering, they said, was searched, in an apparent attempt to stop protesters from marching on the capital, a bulwark of the Assad family’s rule.

In Jabla, a coastal city inhabited by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority and members of the minority Alawite sect, from which the government draws much of its support, security forces killed at least 12 people in a crackdown that began Sunday and persisted into the night. One resident said protesters burned an army car and took a soldier hostage.

“The army is deployed all over the area,” said another resident who gave his name as Abu Ahmed. “I can’t describe how bad the situation was all night. It’s a street war.”

He said the shootings had exacerbated tension between Sunnis and Alawites in the city, a potentially dangerous manifestation in a country with a mosaic of religious and ethnic minorities, many of whom fear the government’s collapse may endanger them.

“The plate has shattered,” he said, using an Arabic expression. “There’s strife between us now, it’s been planted, and the problem is going to exist forever in Jabla.”

The widening crackdown comes amid reports that scores of residents have gone missing in Syria since Friday, many of them from the restive city of Homs and those towns near Damascus, activists say. In Saqba, one of the capital’s suburbs, an organizer said that 100 people had disappeared Friday, with no record of their arrest.

“There is going to be much more bloodshed,” said Wissam Tarif, head of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, “All the signals from my perspective indicate that.”

Mr. Tarif said his organization had compiled the names of 217 people, in all, who had disappeared since early Friday. At least 70 of them were from the towns near the capital’s outskirts and 68 others were from Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and the site of especially vigorous protests the past week. Taken together, he said the group had documented names of missing from 17 cities and villages.

“It just doesn’t stop,” he said. “Names keep pouring in.”

The crackdown is yet another indication that the government’s decision to lift draconian emergency rule, in place since 1963, may prove more rhetoric than reform. Though the government has touted its repeal Thursday as a sweeping step, the past few days have proven some of the bloodiest and most repressive since the uprising began. On Friday alone, more than 100 people were killed in 14 towns and cities.

“We don’t trust this regime anymore,” another protester said in Jabla.

Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations to set up an international inquiry into their deaths and urged the United States and Europe to impose sanctions on officials responsible for the shootings and detentions of hundreds of protesters.

“After Friday’s carnage, it is no longer enough to condemn the violence,” said Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at the organization, which is based in New York.

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