Syrian security forces backed by tanks on Sunday killed 42 civilians in the city of Deir Ezzor and at least 10 more in the central town of Hula, rights activists said, in the army’s latest crackdown on protests. “Forty-two civilians have been killed and more than 100 wounded in Deir Ezzor by gunfire from the armed forces and security agents,” Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights head Abdel Karim Rihawi told AFP. Rihawi said that 28 people were killed in Al-Jura neighbourhood of Deir Ezzor while 14 died in Huweika district. “Thousands of people have fled the city heading further north,” he added. In Hula, a town in the Homs district, at least 10 other people were killed in an army assault with tanks, Rihawi said. “About 25 tanks and troop carriers entered Hula and carried out military operations,” another activist, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said earlier.The Local Coordination Committees which organised the protests said on its Facebook page that snipers were posted on rooftops in Deir Ezzor “and they are firing on anything that moves.” The group also gave a toll of 42 civilians killed by the army and security forces.
