Syrian troops stormed the port city of Latakia and sprayed it with gunfire on Saturday, killing at least one person, activists said, while the West aimed to pressure Damascus to end the violence. “A person was killed in the southern district of Ramleh,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that gunfire rattled the area of Latakia. “Phonelines and Internet were cut,” it said in a statement.
The watchdog said earlier that military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, converged on Ramleh, during a “large demonstration calling for the fall of (President Bashar al-) Assad’s regime.
The Observatory said the arrival of troops sparked the exodus of a large number of residents, especially women and children. It also reported a “wave of arrests” in Latakia on Thursday. An activist in the central region of Homs said troops backed by two tanks entered the village of Jussiyeh which borders Lebanon, triggering a stampede across the frontier and to neighbouring areas. Military vehicles, meanwhile, swooped on the town of Qusayr, also in Homs province, where security and intelligence services carried out arrests. “Ten military trucks, seven security vehicles and 15 buses full of pro-regime militiamen entered these villages,” the Observatory said. Security forces backed by tanks have been trying to crush dissent city by city and town by town since pro-democracy protests erupted in mid-March.
The Observatory says 2,150 people have been confirmed dead since then — 1,744 civilians and 406 members of the security forces.
Activists said at least 18 people were killed on Friday when security forces opened fire on thousands of anti-regime protesters who rallied in flashpoint cities after Muslim weekly prayers, updating an earlier toll.
State television said “two security agents were shot dead by armed men in Douma,” a suburb of the capital.
The UN Security Council is to hold a special meeting next Thursday to discuss human rights and the humanitarian emergency in Syria, diplomats at the United Nations said.
