Syrian security forces killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens as they cracked down on protests after Friday prayers, activists said, casting doubt on whether an Arab League plan can end months of bloodshed.
The government offered an amnesty to anyone with weapons if they reported to police within a week, “as long as they did not commit any crimes of killing,” state television reported.
The gesture did not appear to be part of the Arab League plan, accepted by Syria on Wednesday, under which the army would leave turbulent cities, political prisoners would walk free and a dialogue with the opposition would begin within two weeks.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reacted dismissively when asked if she thought Syrians should participate in the amnesty, saying: “I wouldn’t advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment.”
She also accused the Syrian government of failing to carry through on the Arab League plan and said the US had no confidence that it would.
“We have a long, deep history of broken promises by the Assad regime,” she said.
Violence has, if anything, intensified since the Arab League agreement was announced, amid reports of sectarian killings.
Troops fired on protests that erupted after Friday prayers in many towns, killing at least seven people in Kanaker, south of Damascus, nine in the city of Homs, where tanks were again in action, and one in Saqba, near the capital, activists said.
Another two protesters were killed in the city of Hama, 240km north of Damascus, when security forces fired at several thousand protesters who tried to march to the main Orontes square, scene of big demonstrations before tanks stormed the city three months ago, they said.
“Lots of people fell on the ground with bullet wounds and we are afraid some will not make it,” Mohammed, a Kanaker resident, said by telephone.
Citing activists in Kanaker, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a 20-year-old soldier mutinied while his unit was firing on protesters in the town and killed five members of the security forces, including a colonel, before he was shot dead.
Syrian state TV denied any killings and aired footage it said were from areas where protests were reported, showing crowds calmly leaving mosques after prayers. It said four police were injured by gunfire from “armed terrorist groups in Kanaker.”
Homs has emerged as a protest flashpoint and a center for emerging armed resistance to government forces. Activists said tank and sniper fire killed at least 22 people in the central city on Thursday, mainly in the old Bab Amro quarter.
Western sanctions and growing criticism from Turkey and Arab neighbors have raised pressure on Syria to end the bloodshed.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS