Syrian Troops Fire on Daraa as Crackdown Death Toll Rises
April 26, 2011, 3:39 PM EDTBy Massoud A. Derhally and Donna Abu Nasr
(Updates with analyst comment in fifth paragraph, activist comments on Banias in ninth, Sullivan in 14th. See EXTRA for more on Middle East unrest.)
April 26 (Bloomberg) -- Syrian security forces strafed the streets of the southern city of Daraa with machine guns and the government cut off water supplies as the death toll from yesterday’s crackdown rose to 25, a witness said.
Snipers have taken up posts on the roofs of schools and mosques, said Mohsen, who spoke in an interview today by satellite phone and declined to give his surname on concern over reprisals. He said that he and other Daraa residents have pulled the bodies of 14 people from the streets since yesterday, and saw 11 others that they couldn’t remove because of sniper fire. Troops fired machine guns from tanks and armored vehicles.
The Syrian government said its soldiers moved into the city in response to an appeal by residents to “stop killing, vandalism and intimidation by radical terrorists,” the state news agency SANA said yesterday, citing a military official. Activists say the crackdown is aimed at stamping out a six-week uprising.
President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to end the emergency rule in place for half a century and his pledges of future political and economic measures have failed to halt the spread of demonstrations. At least 400 people have been killed nationwide since protests began in Syria in mid-March, Ammar Qurabi, head of Syria’s National Organization for Human Rights, said yesterday.
‘Shock and Awe’
“This opposition protest movement has been snowballing and clearly the military element is saying we have to get control of the situation and we have to stamp this out,” Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist who directs the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, said in a telephone interview today. “This is a classic shock and awe operation to go hard and try to intimidate people.”
More than 1,000 people have been detained across the country since Friday’s demonstrations, bringing the total number of detentions since the unrest began March 15 to at least 2,000, Mahmoud Merhi, who heads the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said in an interview from Damascus today. Mahmoud Issa, a prominent opposition figure and former prisoner who was arrested last week after giving an interview to al-Jazeera has been referred to a military court, Razan Zaitouneh, a Damascus-based human rights lawyer and activist, said on her Facebook page.
“No one has asked the Syrian government to send troops to Daraa,” Merhi said. “Those who want to protect do not kill and arrest people.”
Armored Vehicles
Troops in tanks and armored vehicles stormed Daraa, the center of the most sustained protests, at dawn yesterday and hundreds of soldiers fanned out through the city. Power and phone lines were cut, Qurabi said by phone from Cairo yesterday. Water supplies have also halted, Mohsen said today.
The military appears to be preparing for a possible move into Banias, the site of an earlier crackdown against protesters, Abdul-Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian Human Rights League, said in a telephone interview from Damascus today. He didn’t give further details. Protests are under way in Banias in support of Daraa and also in the port city of Latakia, Zaitouneh said.
Security forces have been deployed around the cities of Jableh, Homs, Moadamya, and Hama and the Damascus suburb of Douma, according to Rami Nakhle, a Syrian dissident who lives in Lebanon. People in Daraa are calling on the Red Cross for help because of a shortage of medical equipment, he said.
Draft Statement
The United Nations Security Council is being asked to condemn the Syrian government’s attacks on protesters, according to diplomats. Britain, France, Germany and Portugal yesterday circulated a draft statement for discussion today, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition of not being identified because the text hasn’t been released.
European Union governments will discuss possible sanctions against Syria, Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for the EU, told reporters in Brussels today. Member states are going to meet in “the days or hours to come to discuss potential actions vis-a- vis Syria,” she said, adding that the meeting will be at an ambassadorial level, without giving further details.
Washington Reviews ‘Options’
In Washington, the Obama administration is looking at a “range of options,” including sanctions, to increase pressure on Assad to halt the violence, White House press secretary Jay Carney said yesterday. The U.S. State Department issued a warning late yesterday urging Americans “to defer all travel to Syria” and advising those in the country now to leave.
The U.S. has no plans to close its embassy in Syria, Jacob Sullivan, the director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department, said today in Washington.
U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman called the Syrian ambassador to the U.S. into his office yesterday, Sullivan told reporters. He also said that the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, was in recent contact with Syrian officials.
Syria is an ally of Iran and a power broker in neighboring Lebanon, where it supports Hezbollah, an armed Shiite Muslim group. Assad and other officials say the violence in Syria is the result of foreign-backed conspirators seeking to exploit the expression of legitimate popular demands. Uprisings already have toppled rulers in Tunisia and Egypt this year and led to a military confrontation in Libya.
The military official who spoke to Sana said that several terrorists have been arrested in Daraa and large quantities of weapons and ammunition have been seized, according to the agency.
Seeking Freedom
“This is totally untrue,” said Merhi. “There are no terrorists. There are no armed gangs. There are just people who are demanding to be free.”
In 1982, Assad’s father crushed a rebellion led by Sunni Muslim militants in the city of Hama, killing as many as 10,000 people according to estimates cited by Human Rights Watch. The current outbreak of unrest is the most serious since then.
Bashar Assad wants “to carry out another Hama to break the resolve of the people but I don’t think this can happen or succeed,” Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer and political activist, said in a telephone interview today.
“There is a popular awakening, a consciousness that didn’t exist before and there is mounting international pressure,” he said. “The events in Tunisia and Egypt have had a profound effect, and this is why the youth and the people are out on the streets.”
--With assistance from Tamara Walid and Inal Ersan in Dubai, Bill Varner in New York, Roger Runningen and Nicole Gaouette in Washington, Jones Hayden in Brussels and Louis Meixler in Istanbul. Editor: Terry Atlas
To contact the reporters on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut at mderhally@bloomberg.net; Donna Abu Nasr in Dubai at dabunasr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
