Friday protests sweep Arab world, 22 die in Syria
Protests erupted across much of the Arab world on the Muslim day of prayer, with demonstrators killed in Syria and Yemen while Egyptians staged one of the biggest rallies since President Hosni Mubarak's fall.
In Syria, 22 people were killed on Friday, sources in the southern Syrian city of Deraa said, in attacks on protesters condemned by U.S. President Barack Obama as ‘abhorrent’.
Five people were shot dead in Yemen and at the heart of the Arab protest movement, Cairo's Tahrir Square, military police beat protesters and fired shots to disperse crowds demanding Mubarak's prosecution as discontent with military rule grows.
In Saudi Arabia, Shi'ites protested in the oil-producing east to call for the withdrawal of Saudi troops from Bahrain, while in Oman, a planned protest was prevented by security.
Friday has become a peak day of protest for many Arabs since popular demands for freedom, democracy and an end to corruption began in Tunisia late last year and spread across the region.
In Syria, security forces opened fire on thousands of demonstrators in the southern city of Deraa as protests against President Bashar al-Assad flared in several towns.
A volunteer at Deraa hospital and an activist said 22 people were killed and 120 wounded. It took the death toll in three weeks of protests to more than 90.
"There were snipers on roofs. Gunfire was heavy. The injured are being taken to homes. No one trusts putting his relative in a hospital in these circumstances," said a witness, who spoke to the media by telephone.
Authorities have blamed armed groups for the violence, and state television broadcast footage of masked gunmen in plain clothes it said fired at security forces and civilians alike. It said 19 policemen were killed.
Syria has prevented other media reporting from Deraa.
In eastern Syria, ethnic Kurds demonstrated for reform, sceptical of Assad's offer this week to ease rules which bar many of them from obtaining citizenship, activists said.
Obama said all violence and repression in Syria had to stop. "The arbitrary arrests, detention, and torture of prisoners that has been reported must end now, and the free flow of information must be permitted so that there can be independent verification of events on the ground," he said in a statement.
Protests in Yemen descended into violence in which at least five people were killed and dozens wounded as President Ali Abdullah Saleh rejected a Gulf Arab plan to secure an end to his 32 years in power. The deaths bring the toll from clashes with security forces this week to at least 26.
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