Security forces killed at least two people as they moved into central and northwest Syria on Thursday, activists said, urging fresh anti-regime protests under the banner of “death rather than humiliation”.
A senior Syrian official, meanwhile, said in a video posted on YouTube that he has resigned in disgust at hundreds of killings and thousands of arrests by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The video has been contested, however.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one person was killed in the Homs district of al-Nazihin, while shots were heard in Bab Sbaa and other areas of the volatile city of central Syria.
The Britain-based rights group also reported “one dead and five wounded in an assault by the army and security forces on the village of al-Rama” in the northwestern province of Idlib, near the Turkish border.
And a girl of 10 died of wounds suffered on Wednesday during a shooting near police headquarters at Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria as she rode in a taxi with her family.
The security forces went into action after mass demonstrations on Wednesday night in several districts of Homs, the Observatory said.
The United Nations says that more than 2 200 people have been killed since the beginning of near-daily protests across the country against Assad’s regime in mid-March.
The head of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights, Abdel Karim Rihawi, said dozens of people had been arrested on Wednesday at Qadam and Qabun in the Damascus region, and at Zabadani, northwest of the capital.
Activists on their Facebook page Syrian Revolution 2011 defiantly called for fresh protests to take place on Friday, the Muslim weekly day of prayers and rallying point for demonstrations.
The rallies will be held under the slogan of “death rather than humiliation,” it said. “We are ready to die in the millions as martyrs.”
In the YouTube video posted late on Wednesday, the attorney general of the flashpoint rebellious province of Hama, Mohammed Adnan al-Bakkour, announced his resignation.
He said he took the decision after hundreds of jailed peaceful demonstrators were killed by the authorities and buried in mass graves, and 10 000 were arrested arbitrarily.
But the official SANA news agency, which reported on Monday that Bakkour had been kidnapped en route to work with his driver and bodyguard, quoted officials as saying his statement had been made under duress.
It quoted Hama governor Anas Naeem as saying: “Bakkour was forced by his captors to give false information.”
Bakkour also cited the deaths of about 320 people under torture at Hama police stations, “the arbitrary arrest of about 10 000 people” and the demolition of homes by the army while occupants were still inside.
The United States has denounced what it called the Syrian regime’s “abhorrent abuse” of prisoners, following an Amnesty International report of 88 deaths in custody between April 1 and August 15, including 10 teenagers.
In at least 52 of the cases, Amnesty said “there is evidence that torture caused or contributed to the deaths”, citing signs of violent beatings, burn marks and cuts.
Assad’s regime has defied Western sanctions over its deadly crackdown on dissent, blaming “armed terrorist gangs” for the violence. — AFP