DERAA – The main hospital in the southern Syrian city of Deraa has received the bodies of at least 37 protesters who were killed in a confrontation with security forces, a hospital official said.
Security forces opened fire on hundreds of youths at the northern entrance to Deraa, according to witnesses, in a dramatic escalation of nearly a week of protests in which at least 44 civilians have been killed since Friday.
Around 20,000 people marched on Thursday in the funerals for nine of those killed, chanting freedom slogans and denying official accounts that infiltrators and “armed gangs” are behind the killings and violence in Deraa.
“Traitors do not kill their own people … God, Syria, Freedom. The blood of martyrs is not spilled in waste!” they chanted in Deraa’s southern cemetery.
As Syrian soldiers armed with AK-47s roamed the streets of the southern city, residents emptied shops of staples and basic goods and said they feared the government of President Bashar al-Assad was intent on crushing the revolt by force.
Assad, a close ally of Iran, key player in neighboring Lebanon and supporter of militant groups opposed to Israel, has dismissed rising demands for reform in Syria, a country of 20 million people run by the Baath Party since a 1963 coup.
A government statement said “outside parties” were spreading lies about the situation in Deraa, which is near the Jordanian border. It blamed “armed gangs” for the violence.
Some people recalled the 1982 massacre in Hama, when Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, sent troops to the conservative religious city to crush the armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Human rights groups say at least 20,000 died.
“If the rest of Syria does not erupt on Friday, we will be facing annihilation,” said one resident, referring to Friday prayers, the only time citizens are allowed to gather en masse without government permission.
