WarSclerotic

Syrian tanks have deployed at the entrances to the city of Hama, activists and residents said on Sunday, two days after it saw the largest protest against President Bashar Assad since an uprising began three months ago.

“Tens of people are being arrested in neighborhoods on the edges of Hama. The authorities seem to have opted for a military solution to subdue the city,” Rami Abdel-Rahman, president of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters.

	Syrian anti-government protesters tearing down a portrait of late president Hafez Assad, right, and his son, President Bashar Assad, in Hama, April 29, 2011.
	Photo by: AFP

Hama, 210 km north of Damascus, was the scene of the bloodiest episode in Syria’s modern history, when troops killed up to 30,000 people in an assault in 1982 to put down an Islamist-led uprising against the iron rule of Assad’s father, the late President Hafez Assad.

On Saturday, President Bashar Assad sacked the governor of Hama province on Saturday, a day after tens of thousands of protesters massed in the provincial capital to demand the Syrian leader step down.

The demonstration in Hama, scene of a bloody crackdown by Assad’s father nearly 30 years ago, was part of nationwide protests which activists said were some of the biggest since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted 14 weeks ago.

Another 10 people were shot dead by security forces who confronted demonstrators in the central city of Homs, Damascus suburbs and the Mediterranean city of Latakia, activists said.