Syrian forces kill 38 at 'Good Friday' protests

[1]

Syrian forces shot dead at least 38 people when they moved in to disperse thousands who took to the streets for ‘Good Friday’ protests to test long sought-after freedoms, sources said.

A day after President Bashar al-Assad scrapped decades of emergency rule, his forces fired live rounds at demonstrators in several towns and cities nationwide, witnesses and activists told AFP by telephone.

The official SANA news agency said security forces intervened using only tear gas and water cannon to ‘prevent clashes’ between protesters and passers-by.

A coalition of protesters from across Syria meanwhile issued a list of demands in a statement blasting “attempts by the Syrian tyrannical machine to thwart and circumvent the acquisition of our basic rights and needs.”

Friday's death toll was the bloodiest since protests for democratic change – the first since emergency rule was imposed by the ruling Baath Party when it seized power in 1963 – erupted in mid-March.

The toll rose steadily throughout the day, according to the sources reached by AFP in Nicosia.

Dozens of people were also wounded when security forces opened fire with live rounds to disperse protesters, the sources said.

At least 14 people were reported killed in the town of Ezreh, in the southern province of Daraa, epicentre of pro-reform and anti-regime protests that erupted in mid-March, the sources said.

One person was killed in Hirak, also in the Daraa region.

Nine people died in the northern Damascus suburb of Douma, the sources added.

And six people were also killed in the Damascus neighbourhoods of Barzeh, Harasta and Al-Maadamiyah.

Two people were also killed in the northern city of Hama, site of a government-sponsored massacre of Islamists in 1982, and two others perished in the main Syrian port city of Latakia, while four died in central Homs.

SANA, which said security forces ‘intervened’ using tear gas and water cannon "to prevent clashes between protesters and citizens and protect public property," also reported confrontations in Hajar Asswad near Damascus.

Thousands of protesters swarmed the mainly Kurdish city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria and Banias in the north and the protest hub of Daraa, in the south, with demonstrators calling for the fall of the regime.

Protesters in Zabadani, northwest of Damascus, called for Assad's regime to stand down and also chanted slogans hostile to key regional Syria allies Iran and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, witnesses said.

About 200 people chanting ‘freedom, freedom’ marched in central Damascus but were quickly dispersed by police, said an activist, while 100 who protested in the central city of Raqqa were scattered by baton-wielding pro-regime supporters, lawyer Abdullah Khalil said.