The death toll in Syria’s violent crackdown on opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in the city of Hama and elsewhere climbed on Tuesday, spurring Western efforts to pile diplomatic pressure on Damascus.
Three more civilians were killed in Hama, including two brothers, Khaled and Fateh Kanil, who died when pro-Assad “shabbiha” militiamen fired at their food-laden car, two residents, one of them a doctor, told Reuters by telephone.
They said a brief riot appeared to have broken out late on Monday at Hama’s main prison. Two shabbiha militia buses were seen heading there at night and smoke rose from the compound as the militiamen shouted “God, Syria, Bashar, only” from inside.
“There is damage to the northern section of the jail and some say burned bodies of prisoners were taken out of the complex,” one of the residents said. Tanks pounded residential neighbourhoods across Hama, the scene of a 1982 massacre, after evening prayers on Monday, the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, witnesses said.
State news agency SANA said “hundreds of masked gunmen on motorbikes” had set fire to the main law court in Hama on Monday afternoon and had also vandalised much of the building.
Human rights campaigners said assaults by Assad’s forces across Syria on Monday and Tuesday had killed at least 27 civilians, including 13 in Hama, where troops and tanks began a violent operation to regain control on Sunday.
That brought the total to about 137 dead throughout Syria in the past three days, 93 of them in Hama, according to witnesses, residents and rights campaigners.
Syria’s state news agency said “armed terrorist groups” had killed eight policemen in Hama. The government blames such groups for most killings in the five-month-old revolt, saying more than 500 soldiers and security personnel have died.
The plight of Hama has prompted many Syrians to stage solidarity marches since the start of Ramadan, but Assad’s tough response suggests he will resist calls for change that have swept Syria and much of the Arab world this year.
Syria has incurred international opprobrium for its harsh measures, but need not fear the kind of foreign military intervention that NATO launched to back rebels in Libya.
The top U.S. military officer called for a swift end to violence in Syria, but only diplomatic pressure was in view.
“There’s no indication whatsoever that the Americans are, that we would get involved directly with respect to this,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the end of a visit to Iraq.
