Security forces have arrested some 500 pro-democracy sympathisers across Syria after the government sent in tanks to try to crush protests in the city of Deraa, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah said on Tuesday.
Security forces have arrested some 500 pro-democracy sympathisers
across Syria after the government sent in tanks to try to crush
protests in the city of Deraa, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah
said on Tuesday.
The independent organisation said it had
received reports that at least 20 people had been killed in Deraa since
tanks moved in on Monday, but communications with the southern town
where the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began on March 18
had been cut making it hard to confirm the information.
"Witnesses
managed to tell us that at least 20 civilians have been killed in
Deraa, but we do not have their names and we cannot verify," said a
Sawasiah official, adding that two civilians were confirmed dead in the
Damascus suburb of Douma, which forces entered earlier in the day.
At least 500 were arrested elsewhere in Syria, it said.
Amnesty
international, citing sources in Deraa, said at least 23 people were
killed when tanks shelled Deraa in what it called "a brutal reaction to
people's demands."
"By resorting to the use of artillery
against its own people today, the Syrian government has shown its
determination to crush the peaceful protests at virtually any cost,
whatever the price in Syrians' lives," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty
International's Middle East and North Africa Director.
Government
forces also stormed the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Mouadhamiya on
Monday, shooting and making arrests, a day after they swept into the
coastal town of Jabla, where at least 13 civilians were killed, rights
campaigners said.
Diplomats said the figures for civilians
killed could be as high as 50 in Deraa and 12 in Mouadhamiya, which
lies on the road to the occupied Golan Heights southwest of Damascus.
"The
regime has chosen to use excessive violence. It worked in 1982, but
there is no guarantee it will work again in the age of the internet and
phone cameras," said a senior diplomat referring to the 1982 crushing
of a revolt in the city of Hama which killed up to 30,000 people.
Footage
posted on the internet by demonstrators in recent days appears to show
troops firing on unarmed crowds. In the Damascus suburb of Barzeh
residents described security forces firing at unarmed protesters from a
heavy machinegun mounted on a truck.
The White House,
deploring "brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its
people," said President Barack Obama's administration was considering
targeted sanctions to make clear that "this behavior is unacceptable."
Syria
has been under US sanctions since 2004 for its support of militant
groups. Several Syrian officials, among them Assad's cousin Rami
Makhlouf, a tycoon, are under specific US sanctions for "public
corruption."
Leading human rights campaigner Suhair
al-Atassi said Assad has launched a savage war designed to annihilate
Syria's democrats by attacking Deraa, Jabla and Damascus suburbs.
"President
Assad's intentions have been clear since he came out publicly saying he
is 'prepared for war'," Atassi said, referring to a March 30 speech to
parliament.
Security forces and the gunmen loyal to Assad
have killed more than 350 civilians across Syria since pro-democracy
protests broke out in Deraa, rights groups say. A third of the victims
were shot in the past four days as the scale and breadth of a popular
revolt against Assad grew.
