Regime forces fired on protesters at a protest hub near Damascus and killed at least 11 people around Syria on Thursday, even as peace monitors spread out across the country, activists said. At least three demonstrators were killed and several others wounded in Douma, the protest centre just north of the capital, when security forces sprayed protesters with bullets outside a mosque, a rights group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the shooting broke out as a Arab League observers arrived at Douma’s city hall, on the third day of a mission designed to halt a lethal government crackdown on dissent. The monitors were due Thursday to visit flashpoints around Damascus, as well as the northern and central cities of Idlib and Hama and southern Daraa province.
Daraa is the cradle of an unprecedented nine-month protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist for 11 years. Activists say that more than 70 civilians have been killed by security forces since a first group of monitors arrived Monday in Syria on a month-long renewable mission to implement an Arab League peace plan.
“A third civilian wounded by gunfire from the security forces has died of his injuries and there are many injured people in critical condition,” said the Britain-based group. Gunfire rattled in Douma where “tens of thousands” of protesters rallied outside the Grand Mosque and regime forces opened fire on the demonstrators “as Arab observers arrived at the city hall,” it said.
The Observatory also reported that security forces shot dead three people in the Damascus suburbs of Aarbin and Kiswah, and two more people further north in Idlib province, while three others died in the central city of Hama.
“Security forces are raiding a private hospital in Hama and are arresting the wounded,” it said. “Huge protests” also took place in Hama’s Hamidiyeh and Bab Qubli neighbourhoods, said the watchdog.
