Security forces storm schools in Syria

Wednesday 21 September 2011

BEIRUT: Syrian security forces moved against several schools around the country Wednesday and detained students who demonstrated against President Bashar Assad’s regime, while troops shot dead at least four people in central Syria, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said dozens of students were detained in the southern village of Jassem. Also, security forces surrounded several schools in the Damascus suburbs of Harasta, Arbeen and Zamalka.

Students have been demonstrating against Assad’s regime since Sunday, the first day of the school year.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed three civilians in the central city of Homs and one in the nearby town of Rastan.

It reported that the bodies of three other people who disappeared last week were also either found or handed to their families by authorities in the northern province of Idlib and the central region of Hama.

President Barack Obama called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Syria because of the deadly crackdown. He told the UN General Assembly Wednesday, “There is no excuse for inaction.”

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is considering sanctions and is coordinating its policy with the US Turkey neighbors Syria and is a key trading partner.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying. “We never wanted things to arrive at this point, but unfortunately, the Syrian administration has forced us to take such a decision.”

The Syrian uprising began in mid-March, during the wave of protests in the Arab world that toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. President Bashar Assad has responded with a brutal crackdown that the UN estimates has killed some 2,600 people.

An amateur video posted online showed people running away in a street in the town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon as cracks of gunfire could be heard. A man could be heard shouting “they are shooting at students in the city of Qusair.”

Another video showed the funeral of a school teacher identified as Jihad Haji who was said to have been shot by security forces. Young mourners could be heard chanting “there is no God but God, Assad is the enemy of God” as they carried his coffin in the areas of Waer near the central city of Homs.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the videos or the accounts of violence. Syria has banned most foreign journalists and restricted local media during the revolt.

Source: Arab News.
Link: http://www.arabnews.com/node/391824.