Syria defiantly on Thursday vowed to restore “security and stability” across the country despite growing international censure for its violent crushing of dissent, as activists called for more protests on Friday.
Growing anger at the regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, meanwhile, saw Britain on Thursday withdraw the Syrian ambassador’s invitation to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
And in the southern town of Dara’a, epicentre of the protests that have shaken President Bashar al-Assad’s once uncontested rule, water and power have been cut and the death toll has risen to 42 on the fourth day of a military siege, a rights activists said.
Syria has been rocked since March 15 by increasingly strident pro-democracy demonstrations, which the authorities have attempted to crush through violence that rights groups say has killed at least 453 civilians.
Information Minister Adnan Mahmud said on Thursday that the crackdown would continue, despite a European Union threat of sanctions and growing world pressure to allow peaceful protests.
“The authorities are determined to restore security, stability and peace to the citizens,” Mahmud said.
“In Dara’a, the army intervened at the request of the population to restore security,” he added.
According to the minister, more than 50 soldiers and dozens of police have been killed and hundreds injured since the revolt began.
Further showdowns expected
Further showdowns are expected after the weekly main Muslim prayers on Friday, when protesters traditionally emerge from mosques to stage mass street demonstrations.
“Friday of Anger, April 29, in solidarity with Dara’a,” says a notice on the Syrian Revolution 2011 page of Facebook, a motor of the protests in which demonstrators inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world are seeking greater freedoms.
“To the youths of the revolution, tomorrow we will be in all the places, in all the streets … we will gather at the besieged towns, including with our brothers in Dara’a,” said the statement posted online on Thursday.
“We will not leave Dara’a isolated,” it said, adding demonstrations would also be staged in other flashpoint towns such as Homs in the centre of the country and Banias in the north-west.
A London-based spokesperson for Syrian opposition activists called on the army to protect citizens confronted with “brutal repression and killings by security forces”.
“We hope that Bashar al-Assad still has an ounce of humanity in him so he can stop this massacre, otherwise the response on Friday will be on the street, where hundreds of thousands will turn out to demonstrate against him and his regime, demanding his departure,” Ausama Monajed said.
His group on Wednesday called upon the regime to implement real reform lest it is “overrun by a popular revolution”.
A rights activist reached by telephone said the situation was worsening in Dara’a, stormed on Monday by between 3 000 and 5 000 troops backed by tanks and snipers.
“We have neither doctors nor medical supplies, not even baby milk. The electricity is always cut and we haven’t any more water,” Abdallah Abazid told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Nicosia by telephone from Dara’a, 100km south of Damascus.
At least 42 “martyrs” have been killed since Monday, Abazid said. Their families, he added, had been unable to bury them because “security forces were firing on anybody visiting the cemetery”, which is controlled by the army.
Fresh blow
Hundreds of Syrians, meanwhile, on Thursday fled into northern Lebanon on foot after they said unrest broke out in the Syrian border town of Tall Kalakh, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
Those fleeing said Syrian troops encircled Tall Kalakh overnight after a demonstration was held there and were preventing people from entering the town of 25 000 residents.
In a fresh blow to the regime, 233 members of Syria’s ruling Ba’ath party announced their resignation in protest at the deadly crackdown on protesters, according to lists seen by AFP.
“The security services have demolished the values with which we grew up. We denounce and condemn everything that has taken place and announce with regret our resignation from the party,” they said in a signed statement.
Russia on Thursday called on its Middle East ally to conduct a thorough probe into those responsible for killing civilians.
The UN Security Council, however, failed to agree on a statement condemning the killing of Syrian protesters, diplomats in New York said. After talks ended in deadlock, Western nations called for an immediate open meeting.
France called for “strong measures” if al-Assad rejects appeals to end violence. The United States said al-Assad must “change course now” and end the use of tanks and guns.
The European Union, meanwhile, is mulling sanctions and the UN human rights body has called for a special session in the wake of the Syrian regime’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. — AFP