Syria, accused by France of committing “crimes against humanity,” Thursday pressed its crackdown on dissent as it sent security forces into a northwestern village, rights activists said. “A force comprising seven armoured vehicles and 10 jeeps stormed the village of Ibleen in Jabal Al-Zawiyah (region) in search of people wanted by the security services,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.
“Heavy gunfire was heard as the forces stormed the village,” the Observatory said in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.
The assault on the village comes a day after regime forces, according to rights activists, killed another 23 people, 21 of them in a tank-backed raid on the flashpoint central city of Homs.
