Protests and shooting in Syria as unrest spreads

Dozens of people killed in action against protesters.

President Bashar al-Assad faced the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power on Saturday, with one city in the grip of anti-government protesters and unrest spreading to other parts of Syria.

Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials have said, and there were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday, during demonstrations that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in this most tightly controlled of Arab countries.

There were also protests in the capital Damascus and in Hama, a northern city where in 1982 the forces of Assad’s father killed thousands of people and razed much of the old quarter to put down an armed uprising by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Government officials accused armed opponents of taking part in demonstrations and said the use of force was justified. Access for journalists was restricted, although a Reuters reporter in Deraa said tens of thousands of people who marched on Friday during funerals for demonstrators killed earlier in the week appeared largely to be unarmed.

Inspired by successful uprisings against authoritarian rule in Egypt and Tunisia, the mourners chanted for “Freedom”. Early on Saturday, mosques across Deraa announced the names of “martyrs” whose funerals would be held later in the day. Municipal workers cleared debris around a statue of Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, toppled by protesters. Hafez al-Assad ruled for 30 years until his death in 2000.

The International Crisis Group think-tank said the 45-year-old, British-educated Assad could call on reserves of goodwill among the population to steer away from confrontation and introduce political and economic reforms.

“Syria is at what is rapidly becoming a defining moment for its leadership,” the think-tank wrote on Friday. “There are only two options. One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change. “The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end.”

International condemnation
There was a chorus of international condemnation of the shootings of demonstrators. But analysts said Syria, which has strong defences and a close alliance with Iran, was unlikely to face the kind of foreign intervention seen in Libya.

Bordered by Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, Syria and its 22 million people sit at the heart of a complex web of conflict in West Asia.

Internally, rule by the Assads has favoured the minority Alawite sect, causing resentments among the Sunni Muslim majority. Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt, said that friction made many in the establishment wary of giving ground to demands for political freedoms and economic reforms.

In a central square in Deraa, the Reuters reporter saw protesters haul down the statue of Hafez al-Assad, before security men in plain clothes opened fire with automatic rifles from buildings.

Building ablaze
By evening, however, security forces appeared to have melted away and a crowd of protesters gathered again in the main square, setting a government building on fire, witnesses said.

After pulling down the statue, in a scene that recalled the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 by US troops, some protesters poured fuel into the broken cast and set it alight.