More deaths as protests in Syria focus on capital

Syrian security forces killed at least 20 protesters yesterday as hundreds of thousands flooded the streets nationwide in the largest anti-government demonstrations since the uprising began more than four months ago, witnesses and activists said.

In a significant show of the uprising's strength, thousands of protesters turned out in the capital, Damascus.

The crowds also took to the streets in areas where the government crackdown has been most intense, a sign that President Bashar al-Assad's forces cannot smother the increasingly defiant uprising.

The protests stretched from the capital and its suburbs to Hasakeh and Idlib provinces in the north, Daraa in the south and Latakia on the coast.

Thousands converged on the flashpoint cities of Homs and Hama in central Syria, among other areas across the nation of 22 million.

"All hell broke loose, the firing was intense," an activist in Daraa said.

The uprising is the boldest challenge to the Assad family's 40-year dynasty in Syria, one of the most authoritarian states in the Middle East.

Assad, now 45, inherited power in 2000, but there were hopes that the soft-spoken young leader might transform his late father's stagnant and brutal dictatorship into a modern state.

However, over the past 11 years, hopes dimmed that Mr Assad was a reformist at heart. As his regime escalates a brutal crackdown, it seems unlikely that he will regain political legitimacy.

Previously, the regime pointed to the quiet streets of Damascus to argue that the protest movement is marginal and cannot threaten Mr Assad's power. Yesterday's protests are likely to make it more difficult to dismiss the uprising.

"The number of protesters in Damascus shows that the uprising is gaining momentum week after week, day after day," said Mustafa Osso, a Syria-based human rights activist.

One of the largest protests took place in Hama, Syria's fourth-largest city and an opposition stronghold. An activist in the city said many people from nearby villages joined the protests.

He added that the area, which has been out of government control since early June, is suffering from lack of medicine and food due to a siege by troops.

The Syrian opposition dedicated yesterday's protests to the tens of thousands of people detained since the uprising began in mid-March. Activist claim 15,000 are still being held. David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the large numbers protesting in Damascus suggests more people are giving up on the regime because the momentum is with the uprising.

"This is the heart of the regime, and so I think if these protests continue and gain strength there, then it will be beginning of the end of the regime," he said.

Activists say the government crackdown on dissent has killed some 1,600 people, many unarmed. The government disputes the toll and blames the bloodshed on gangs and a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife in Syria.

BASSEM MROUE and ZEINA KARAM