Syrian opposition movements meeting in Turkey said in a statement yesterday they had formed a common front uniting all groups that oppose the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“The Syrian Council is open to all Syrians. It is an independent group personifying the sovereignty of the Syrian people in their struggle for liberty,” Paris-based Burhan Ghalioun told reporters.
“The council rejects any outside interference that undermines the sovereignty of the Syrian people,” he added.
Ghalioun, a France-based academic, had recently been designated leader of opposition group the National Transitional Council, which has Islamist and nationalist supporters.
The new opposition grouping announced yesterday unites Syrian opposition movements across the political spectrum and includes the Local Coordination Committees which groups activists on the ground, liberals and the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Kurds and Assyrians.
Representatives of Syria’s six-month-old protest movement and opposition had been meeting since Friday to forge a united front against Assad’s regime which the UN says has killed at least 2,700 people since protests erupted in mid-March.
Meanwhile, Syrian troops have retaken control of the central city of Rastan after sending in 250 tanks to quell clashes between the army and deserters, human rights activists said yesterday.
“The Syrian army has taken complete control of Rastan and 50 tanks left on Sunday,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said of the town in Homs Province, 160km north of Damascus.
“Many houses have been destroyed there and the humanitarian situation is very bad,” the Britain-based rights watchdog said.
“We have information that dozens of civilians were killed and buried in the gardens of houses as the army shelled the town,” it added.
Officers who had deserted announced their “retreat from Rastan” in a statement on Friday night.
“Because of major reinforcements and the weapons used in Rastan by Assad’s gangs ... we have decided to withdraw in order to better wage the struggle for liberty,” the statement said.
The Assad regime’s deadly crackdown on dissent continued on Saturday, with fresh violence claiming more lives. Three people were reported killed in clashes in Rastan between the army and deserters.
Yesterday, the bodies of two civilians detained several days ago were returned to their families in Khan Sheikhun near the border with Turkey in Idlib Province in the northwest.
Activists used the Internet to call for protests at universities in Aleppo, Damascus, Deir Ezzor, Homs and Latakia.
“Today is the day of the universities uprising. Everyone knows the fear the universities inspire in the regime,” said a statement on “The Syrian Revolution 2011” Facebook page.
The Syrian Observatory reported the arrest in Homs the previous day of Mansur Atassi, 63, a leader of a coalition of opposition groups, saying he was detained in his office by security agents.
Meanwhile, the official SANA news agency said a train driver and his helper were injured in an accident caused by an “armed terrorist group” at Ubin in Idlib Province.
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