More deadly violence erupted in Syria on Saturday as snipers killed two people and demonstrators torched an office of the ruling Baath party of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The violence came on day 12 of dissent in a country renowned for its iron grip on security.
Authorities, however, freed 260 political detainees in a bid to appease increasingly angry protesters, who have put Assad under unprecedented domestic pressure since he came to power in 2000.
Photo: EPA
Officials have confirmed 27 deaths in clashes between demonstrators and security forces — 20 of them protesters — in cities including Homs, Sanamen, Daraa and Latakia since the rallies began on March 15.
Activists have put the death toll at more than 126, with upwards of 100 killed on Wednesday last week alone in a bloody crackdown on protests in Daraa, the southern tribal town that has become the symbol of the protests.
In Latakia, a port city 350km northwest of Damascus, two people were killed by sniper fire and two more were wounded, a Syrian official told reporters.
In Tafas, south of the capital, angry residents torched a police station and the local headquarters of the Baath party, which has ruled Syria single-handedly for almost half a century.
In nearby Daraa, at the Jordanian border, about 300 bare-chested young men climbed on the rubble of a statue of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, shouting anti-regime slogans, witnesses said.
Daraa demonstrators on Friday tore down the statue and burned the home of the governor, who was dismissed after demonstrations against him earlier this month.
The government has announced a string of reforms to appease demonstrators, including the possibility of ending an emergency law in place since 1963.
However, protesters have vowed to keep taking to the streets until their demands for more freedom are met. The authorities have accused “armed gangs” of pushing peaceful rallies into violence.
Rights groups on Saturday said the political detainees were freed from the notorious Saydnaya prison, north of Damascus, in the biggest concession by the state yet.
“Syrian authorities have freed 260 detainees from Saydnaya prison, mainly Islamists but also including 14 Kurds, in a move that comes as part of the promises authorities made recently to boost freedom in Syria,” Abdul Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights, said.
A high-ranking official confirmed the news, but would not give a number.
Despite a call for massive protests on Saturday on Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011, which has emerged as the motor of the protest movement, the only rallies in Damascus were in support of Bashar al-Assad.
Men, women and children were on the city’s streets on foot and in cars, blaring horns and chanting support for the ruling regime as they waved Syrian flags and pictures of both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad.
Authorities have clamped down on anti-regime protests in the capital, where government supporters have taken to the streets nightly to voice their support for the 45-year-old president.
AFP reporters have witnessed activists being dragged away by plainclothes security men after two separate protests at the landmark Umayyad Mosque over the past week.
Fears are rising that the protests could slide into sectarian-based dissent.
Access to Daraa has been restricted and security forces escorted a team of AFP reporters out of the town on Friday.
However, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday accused the US of trying to oust Syria’s leader to seize the country’s resources.
“The attack on Syria has begun,” Chavez said at a political event, who charged that the US was trying to oust Bashar al-Assad to seize Syria’s resources.
“The Yankees come in to bomb the people in order to save them. What cynicism on the empire’s part,” Chavez said, using a term Venezuela routinely uses to criticize US international action.
Chavez, who said he had spoken with Bashar al-Assad by phone, compared the Syrian situation to the crisis in Libya, where an international coalition with UN backing has been striking at forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi for a week.
“It’s the same model,” Chavez said. “Generate internal conflicts, bloodshed, in a country in order to then step in, seize its natural resources and make it a colony. It is a new model they have come up with.”
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