Good Friday Massacre stuns Syria

Published on Friday 22 April 2011 17:11

Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas at pro- democracy demonstrations across the country yesterday, reportedly killing at least 72 people - one a young boy - in one of the bloodiest days of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime.

Protesters flooded into the streets after Muslim prayers in at least nine areas across the country, a sign that Assad's attempts to quell the month-long protests with a deadly crackdown and promises of reform have all but failed.

"Bullets started flying over our heads like heavy rain," said a witness in Izraa, a southern village in Daraa, the region where the uprising began.

The protest movement has been the gravest challenge against the regime led by Assad, who inherited power from his father 11 years ago in one of the most rigidly controlled countries in the Middle East.

The uprising takes its inspiration from the popular revolts sweeping the Arab world. But there are differences in Syria that make the protest movement there more unpredictable.

Unlike the armies of Tunisia and Egypt, Syria's military and security apparatus will almost certainly stand by Assad, at least for the time being.

That means there could be darker days ahead as the uprising gains momentum, something that has implications far beyond Syria's borders. Damascus stands in the middle of the most combustible conflicts in the region because of its web of allegiances, from Lebanon's Hezbollah and Shiite powerhouse, Iran.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people were protesting in the Damascus suburb of Douma, the central cities of Hama and Homs, Latakia and Banias on the coast, the northern cities of Raqqa and Idlib, the north-eastern Kurdish region, and Daraa.

As they dispersed, the scale of the bloodshed began to emerge.

Outside the capital, witnesses said they saw at least five corpses at the Hamdan hospital. All had gunshot wounds.

In Daraa, other witnesses said at least ten people were killed when protesters marched in front of a mayor's office and an 11-year-old boy was among the dead. A video posted on the protest movement's Facebook page showed a man carrying a bloodied boy near a building as another child could be heard weeping and shouting "My brother!"

Ammar Qurabi, head of Syria's National Organisation for Human Rights, said nine people were killed in Hajar Aswad, near Damascus, and three in Homs.

The protest movement has crossed a significant threshold in recent days, with increasing numbers now seeking the downfall of the regime, not just reforms.The security crackdown has only emboldened protesters, who are enraged over the deaths of more than 200 people over five weeks.

The president has been trying to defuse the protests by launching a bloody crackdown along with a series of concessions, most recently lifting emergency laws that gave authorities almost boundless powers of surveillance and arrest.

He also has fulfilled a decades-old demand by granting citizenship to thousands among Syria's long-ostracised Kurdish minority, fired local officials, released detainees and formed a new government.

However many protesters said the concessions have come too late - and Assad does not deserve the credit.

"The state of emergency was brought down, not lifted," prominent activist Suhair Atassi wrote on her Twitter page. "It is a victory as a result of demonstrations, protests and the blood of martyrs who called for Syria's freedom."