Assad hits back with all-out assault on rebels' home city

IN A sharp escalation of Syria's crackdown on dissent, thousands of soldiers backed by tanks yesterday poured into the city where the five-week-old uprising began, opening fire indiscriminately on civilians before dawn and killing at least 11 people.

The offensive into the southern city of Daraa was planned in comprehensive detail. Electricity, water and mobile phone services were cut, knife- wielding security agents conducted house-to-house sweeps, districts were sectioned off and checkpoints set up - suggesting Syria had plans to impose military-style control on the city and other areas in the country.

"They have snipers firing on everybody who is moving," said one eye-witness over the telephone. "They aren't discriminating. There are snipers on the mosque."

The assault appeared to be part of new strategy for crippling pre-emptive strikes against any opposition to president Bashar Assad, rather than reacting to marches and protests. Other crackdowns and sweeping arrests were reported on the outskirts of Damascus and the coastal town of Jableh.

But the attack on Daraa, an impoverished city on the Jordanian border, was by far the biggest in scope and firepower. Video footage shot by activists purported to show tanks rolling through streets and over fields. Youths pelted the passing vehicles with stones, and hospital hallways were later crowded with those injured.

"Let Obama come and take Syria. Let Israel come and take Syria. We need international intervention - we need countries to help us," shouted one Daraa resident over the phone. "Anything is better than Bashar Assad."

Razan Zeitounia, a human rights activist in Damascus, said widespread arrests appeared to be an attempt to intimidate protesters and set an example for the rest of the country.

More than 350 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in mid-March, touched off by the arrest of teenagers in Daraa who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall. An eyewitness yesterday counted 11 corpses, with another 14 people lying in the streets either dead or badly injured.

Mr Assad has blamed most of the unrest on a "foreign conspiracy" and armed thugs.

Yesterday, Syria's state-run television repeatedly ran lingering, gruesome close-ups of dead soldiers, their eyes blown out and parts of their limbs missing, to back up claims that they were under attack. The footage then flipped to the soldiers' funeral marches, with men hoisting photographs of Mr Assad.

Syrian television also quoted a military source as saying army units, "answering the pleas for help by residents of Daraa", entered the city to bring security.

Last week, Mr Assad fulfilled a key demand of the protest movement by abolishing the nearly 50-year-old emergency laws that had given the regime a free hand to arrest people without cause.But he coupled the concession with a stern warning that protesters would no longer have an excuse to hold mass protests, and any further unrest would be considered "sabotage".