Syrian forces shot dead 19 people on Friday when they fired at demonstrators demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.
Thousands of Syrians have fled to escape the military campaign to crush anti-government protests, while all oil production in Syria has stopped.
Syrians fled a restive town towards the Turkish border, fearing bloodshed as troops with tanks approached.
Syrian security forces shot dead at least 30 demonstrators on Friday during protests that broke out across the country.
Syrian tanks shelled residential areas in two towns and at least 19 people were killed across the country, rights campaigners said.
Tanks stormed the mostly Sunni Muslim city of Banias on Saturday, a rights campaigner said, raising sectarian tension in a country swept by protests.
The US, reacting to the killing of 27 protesters by Syrian security forces on Friday, threatened to take new steps against the Syrian government.
Security forces on Monday rounded up hundreds of pro-democracy sympathisers, including prominent human rights campaigner Diana Jawabra.
Syrian troops in tanks and armoured vehicles poured into the southern town Deraa and opened fire on Monday.
Syrian security forces killed almost 90 protesters on Friday, activists said, the bloodiest day in a month of escalating pro-democracy demonstrations.
The Syrian authorities’ arrest of a opposition figure suggests that a Bill passed to end emergency rule after 48 years will not halt repression.
Thousands demanded the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday at the funeral of eight protesters killed in the central city of Homs.
Protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad swept into the Damascus for the first time since a wave of unrest began to put pressure on his rule.
Syrian forces killed at least six people on Wednesday in an attack on a mosque in the southern city of Deraa.
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/ 11 October 2007
French archaeologists say they have excavated an 11 000-year-old wall painting in red, black and white in northern Syria that they describe as the oldest in the world, although it resembles a modern work. The two-square-metre painting was found below ground at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates.