Marching across Syria, chanting to topple the regime

- Talal Abdullah
Tuesday, 06 September 2011

Global Arab Network - Syrian soldiers opened fire in and around the rebellious city of Homs on Tuesday, killing two people, including a teenager, as the U.N. secretary-general urged the world to take action on Syria.

Also, the bodies of five unidentified people, including a woman, were found around the city center, activists said.

15 Demonstrators were killed on Monday in the central city of Homs and the northern province of Idlib, according to Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights. Security forces also carried out a “major assault” on Monday on the town of Nawa, near the southern province of Daraa where the uprising began in March, Merhi said by phone on Tuesday.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Arabi will visit Damascus on Wednesday, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency reported, without saying how it got the information. The visit takes place in the wake of expanded sanctions by the European Union in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, Adelsalam Hassoun, 24, a blacksmith, was killed by army snipers on Monday just after he had crossed into Turkey from the village of Ain al-Baida on the Syrian side, his cousin told Reuters by telephone from Syria.

"Abdelsalam was hit in the head. He was among a group of family members and other refugees who dashed across the plain to Turkey when six armored personnel carrier deployed outside Ain al-Baida and started firing their machineguns into the village at random this morning," Mohammad Hassoun said

Thousands of families fled their homes in the northern border region in June when troops assaulted town and villages that had seen big protests against Assad.

Faced with a heavy security presence in central neighborhoods of Damascus and Aleppo, and military assaults against a swathe of cities from Latakia on the coast to Deir al-Zor in the East, street rallies calling for an end to the Assad family's domination of Syria have intensified in towns and villages across the country of 20 million.

Demonstrators have been encouraged by the fall of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and growing international pressure on Assad. The European Union has imposed an embargo on Syrian oil exports, jeopardizing a major source of revenue for Assad, who inherited power from his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

"Economic pressure will be key in swaying the merchant class toward the side of the uprising, but Assad will keep adopting the military solution and deploying heavy weapons across Syria," said Syrian dissident in exile Bassam al-Bitar.

"International intervention, something akin to a no-fly zone, will still be needed to protect protests and encourage more members of the army to defect," Bitar, a former diplomat, told Reuters from Washington.

Source: Global Arab Network.
Link: http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/2011090612080/Syria-Politics/marching-across-syria-chanting-to-topple-the-regime.html.