Syrian forces killed at least 19 people in raids near the Lebanon border and in the country’s Sunni tribal heartland, activists said, pursuing a military campaign to crush street protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s forces have intensified assaults on towns and cities across the country since the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan to subdue mounting dissent against the ruling family, despite threats of new U.S. sanctions and calls from Turkey, Syria’s powerful northern neighbour, and Arab nations, to halt the attacks.
“Assad remains convinced that the military solution is working, ignoring the fact that as soon as he contains demonstrations in one town they erupt in another,” a Western diplomat in the Syrian capital said. “At one point he may not have enough loyalist troops capable of exerting control over simultaneous centres of protests,” he added. Assad belongs to Shia Islam’s minority Alawite sect. Activists and rights campaigners said 11 civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed on Thursday when troops and tanks swept into Qusair, 135 km (85 miles) north of Damascus, after overnight protests calling for Assad’s removal.
In nearby Homs, activists said on Friday that five people, including a nine-year-old boy, were killed in an overnight raid on the Byada residential district after protests in the city.
Nightly Ramadan prayers, or ‘tarawih’, which follow the breaking of the fast, have given more Syrians a focus for daily protest marches against 41 years of Assad family rule over the country of 20 million, activists said.
Syrian authorities have expelled most independent journalists since the five-month-old uprising began, making it difficult to verify reports from both sides. In the east, troops and Military Intelligence personnel, backed by armoured vehicles, stepped up their assault on Deir al-Zor, capital of an oil-producing province bordering Iraq’s Sunni heartland.
Four civilians were killed in house-to-house raids in Deir al-Zor on Thursday and several shops belonging to families of prominent dissidents in the city were burned down, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
One person was killed in the coastal city of Latakia. About 14 tanks and armoured vehicles swept into Saraqeb, a town on Syria’s main north-south highway that has seen daily demonstrations, and security forces arrested 100 people, residents said by telephone.
The tanks later withdrew and residents staged a night-time rally in the town’s streets, but security forces fired at the demonstrators, injuring four, the Syrian Observatory said.
