Syrian tanks storm town near Turkey border
Syrian tanks storm town near Turkey border.
By REUTERS
06/18/2011 13:08
AMMAN – Syrian troops and gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad stormed a town near the Turkish border on Saturday, burning houses and arresting 70 people, witnesses said, in wide-ranging military assault to crush a three month uprising.
“They came at 7 a.m to Bdama. I counted nine tanks, 10 armoured carriers, 20 jeeps and 10 buses. I saw shabbiha (gunmen) setting fire to two houses,” said Saria Hammouda, a lawyer from the small town of Bdama.
The town lies 2 km from the Turkish border, in Jisr al-Shughour region, from where thousands of people have fled to Turkey following military assaults to quell dissent against 41 years of Assad family rule
In Lebanon, the Lebanese army clamped down on two sectarian districts of a northern city on Saturday after a rally in support of anti-government protesters in Syria triggered deadly clashes between rival gunmen.
Troops manned checkpoints and searched cars and houses in Tripoli’s Bab al-Tebbaneh neighbourhood, a Sunni Muslim stronghold, and Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood, whose residents hail from the same Alawite sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
19 Syrians died on Friday when Syrian government forces fired at demonstrators demanding the removal of President Bashar Assad in the biggest protest since unrest against Baathist rule erupted in March, activists said.
European powers, which had initiated a detente with Assad prior to the street protests to try to draw the Syrian leader away from Iran and also stabilize Lebanon, said Damascus should face tougher sanctions for the violence.
Tens of thousands of people rallied across the country, defying Assad’s military crackdown and ignoring a pledge that his tycoon cousin Rami Makhlouf, a symbol of corruption, would renounce his business empire and channel his wealth to charity.
“Protests last week were big and this week they are bigger still. The demonstrators have not held squares consistently yet in big cities like we had seen in Egypt, but we’re heading in this direction,” opposition figure Walid Bunni told Reuters by telephone from Damascus.
“The security grip is weakening because the protests are growing in numbers and spreading, and more people are risking their lives to demonstrate. The Syrian people realize that this is an opportunity for liberty that comes once in hundreds of years,” said Bunni, who was a political prisoner for eight years.
The worst bloodshed was in Homs, a merchant city of one million people in central Syria, where the Local Coordination Committees, a main activist group linked to protesters, said 10 demonstrators were killed. State television said a policeman was killed by gunmen.
One protester was also reported killed in the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, the first to die there in the unrest.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which operates from Britain, said it could confirm only 10 civilians killed overall in Syria.
The Syrian government has barred most international journalists from the country, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and officials.
Syrian authorities blame the violence on “armed terrorist groups” and Islamists, backed by foreign powers.
Friday Muslim prayers have provided a platform for the biggest protests, inspired by revolts across the Arab world.
Witnesses and activists said tens of thousands of people protested in the southern province of Deraa where the revolt began, as well as in the Kurdish northeast, the province of Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq’s Sunni heartland, the city of Hama north of Damascus, the coast and suburbs of the capital itself.
Two towns on the main Damascus-Aleppo highway north of Homs were also encircled by troops and tanks, residents said, five days after the army retook the town of Jisr al-Shughour, sending thousands feeling across the nearby border into Turkey.
Refugees from the northwestern region said troops and gunmen loyal to Assad, known as ‘shabbiha’ were pressing on with a scorched earthed campaign in the hill farm area by burning crops, ransacking houses and shooting randomly.
The International Federation for Human Rights and the US-based Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies said in a statement that, according to local sources, the Syrian forces killed more than 130 people and arrested over 2,000 in Jisr Shughour and surrounding villages over the last few days.
The number of refugees who had crossed over from Syria has reached 9,600, and another 10,000 were sheltering by the border just inside Syria, according to Turkish officials.
Syrian rights groups say at least 1,300 civilians have been killed and 10,000 people have been detained since March.
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