Monday, April 25, 2011

Some 500 arrested in Syria crackdown: rights group (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – Security forces hit inactive some 500 pro-democracy sympathizers crossways Syria after the polity dispatched in tanks to essay to modify protests in the municipality of Deraa, the Asiatic rights methodicalness Sawasiah said on Tuesday.

The autarkical methodicalness said it had conventional reports that at small 20 grouping had been killed in Deraa since tanks touched in on Monday, but subject with the southern municipality where the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began on March 18 had been revilement making it hornlike to support the information.

"Witnesses managed to verify us that at small 20 civilians hit been killed in Deraa, but we do not hit their names and we cannot verify," said a Sawasiah official, adding that digit civilians were confirmed dead in the Damascus community of Douma, which forces entered early in the day.

At small 500 were inactive elsewhere in Syria, it said.

Amnesty international, citing sources in Deraa, said at small 23 grouping were killed when tanks shelled Deraa in what it titled "a fell activity to people's demands."

"By resorting to the use of armament against its possess grouping today, the Asiatic polity has shown its determination to modify the peaceful protests at virtually some cost, whatever the price in Syrians' lives," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Middle East and North continent Director.

Government forces also stormed the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Mouadhamiya on Monday, shooting and making arrests, a period after they swept into the coastal municipality of Jabla, where at small 13 civilians were killed, rights campaigners said.

Diplomats said the figures for civilians killed could be as broad as 50 in Deraa and 12 in Mouadhamiya, which lies on the agency to the occupied Golan Heights southwest of Damascus.

"The program has chosen to use unrestrained violence. It worked in 1982, but there is no indorse it will work again in the age of the internet and sound cameras," said a grownup functionary referring to the 1982 crushing of a sicken in the municipality of Hama which killed up to 30,000 people.

Footage posted on the internet by demonstrators in recent life appears to exhibit troops onset on clean crowds. In the Damascus community of Barzeh residents described section forces onset at clean protesters from a heavy machinegun mounted on a truck.

The White House, deploring "brutal hostility utilised by the polity of Syria against its people," said President Barack Obama's administration was considering targeted sanctions to make country that "this behavior is unacceptable."

Syria has been low U.S. sanctions since 2004 for its support of militant groups. Several Asiatic officials, among them Assad's relation Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon, are low limited U.S. sanctions for "public corruption."

Leading human rights nominee Suhair al-Atassi said Assad has launched a savage struggle designed to eradicate Syria's democrats by offensive Deraa, Jabla and Damascus suburbs.

"President Assad's intentions hit been country since he came discover publically saying he is 'prepared for war'," Atassi said, referring to a March 30 style to parliament.

Security forces and the gunmen hardcore to Assad hit killed more than 350 civilians crossways Syria since pro-democracy protests poor discover in Deraa, rights groups say. A third of the victims were effort in the time four life as the scale and breadth of a popular sicken against Assad grew.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)


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