Syria: Assad sends tanks to Hama as Swiss freeze £19m of assets

Published on Sunday 3 July 2011 16:05

Syrian tanks were yesterday deployed at the entrances to the city of Hama, two days after it saw the largest protest against president Bashar al-Assad since an uprising began three months ago.

"Tens of people are being arrested in neighbourhoods on the edges of Hama. The authorities seem to have opted for a military solution to subdue the city," Rami Abdel-Rahman, president of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

Hama, 130 miles north of Damascus, was the scene of the bloodiest episode in Syria's modern history, when troops, mostly from Syria's Alawite minority sect, killed up to 30,000 people in an assault in 1982 to put down an Islamist-led uprising against the iron rule of Mr Assad's father, the late president Hafez al-Assad.

A resident of Hama said communication networks had been cut off in the city, a tactic that has been used by the military ahead of assaults on cities and towns elsewhere, and security forces and gunmen loyal to Mr Assad were seen in several neighbourhoods.

"They fired their rifles randomly this morning in the Mashaa district. Arrests concentrated in the areas around the football stadium and in Sabounia district," the resident, a shop owner who gave his name as Kamel, said by phone from an area outside the city, where telephones had not been cut off.

Mr Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has ruled the majority Sunni country since 2000.

He sacked the governor of Hama province, Ahmad Khaled Abdulaziz, on Saturday.

Syria's state-run news agency did not say why the governor was dismissed.

Some activists said they feared Mr Abdulaziz, who was viewed as sympathetic to the demonstrators, was dismissed to give free rein to the security forces in the city.

"There's a lot of fear there," said Syrian activist Ammar Qurabi, who is also monitoring movement around Hama.

Mr Assad has also fired the governors of Dara'a, a poor region in southern Syria where the uprising erupted in mid-March, and Homs, a city south of Hama that has become a nexus of protest, with a well-organised local leadership.

The security presence had lessened in Hama since forces killed at least 60 protesters in the city a month ago, in one of the bloodiest days of the uprising against the regime.

Residents said security forces and snipers had fired on crowds of demonstrators.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Mr Assad and his top officials in response to the brutal crackdown, in which at least 1,300 civilians have been killed according to rights groups.

Neighbouring Turkey has warned Mr Assad against repeating "another Hama", in reference to the 1982 massacre.

Also yesterday, the Swiss government said it had frozen 27 million Swiss francs (19.9m) linked to senior Syrian officials.A spokeswoman for Switzerland's state secretariat for economic affairs, Antje Baertschi, said the assets were identified as part of the sanctions imposed against Mr Assad and 22 other officials.

Switzerland has taken similar measures to freeze assets of other Arab leaders facing demonstrations against their rule.