Thousands flee as Assad's troops spread net

Thousands of Syrians fled the historic town of Maarat al-Numaan yesterday to escape troops and tanks pushing into the north in a widening military campaign to crush protests against president Bashar al-Assad.

In the tribal east, where Syria's 380,000 barrels per day of oil is produced, tanks and armoured vehicles deployed in the city of Deir al-Zor and around Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, a week after tens of thousands of people took to the streets there demanding an end to Assad's autocratic rule.

"Cars are continuing to stream out of Maarat al-Numaan in all directions," one witness said by phone. "People are loading them with everything: blankets, mattresses on roofs."

Syrian forces pushed towards the town of 100,000, which straddles the main north-south highway linking Damascus with Syria's second city Aleppo, after arresting hundreds of people in villages close to Jisr al-Shughour, near the border with Turkey, residents said. The state news agency Sana said an army crackdown in Jisr al-Shughour, where the government said 120 security personnel were killed earlier this month, had restored security there and thousands of people were returning. It also said the army had found a second mass grave in the town containing the bodies of soldiers and police killed by "armed terrorist groups".

Witnesses said the fighting broke out when residents and deserting security forces attacked a police compound in Jisr al-Shughour about ten days ago after police killed 48 people.

They said 60 police, including 20 deserters, were killed.

More than 8,500 Syrians, many from Jisr al-Shughour, have sought sanctuary in Turkey, which has set up four refugee camps across the border, about 12 miles from the town.

A 36-year-old Syrian who gave his name as Ahmed fled with his wife and six children to Turkey after learning troops had arrived in Jisr al-Shughour, near his village.

"We came here to protect our family. We're not against them (security forces] but they fight us like we were infidels," Ahmed said in a narrow street in the Turkish border village of Guvecci.

In Damascus, thousands of Assad supporters lined one of the capital's main thoroughfares and lifted a 2,300m-long tricolour Syrian flag, while waving pictures of the president. State media said it was a demonstration of national unity and "rejection of foreign interference in Syrian internal affairs".

Syrian rights groups say 1,300 civilians have been killed since the start of the uprising in March against Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 41 years. One Syrian rights group, says more than 300 soldiers and police have also been killed.The United Nations human rights office accused Syrian security forces yesterday of brutally repressing protests through executions, mass arrests and torture.

"The most egregious reports concern the use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians, including from snipers on rooftops, and the deployment of tanks in areas densely populated by civilians," it said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council.

Maarat al-Numaan is a centre of Muslim pilgrimage and historic site of a medieval massacre by Crusaders. In modern times it was the focus of a campaign to crush Islamist and left-wing challengers to Bashar's father, the late Hafez al-Assad.

In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, witnesses said tanks deployed inside the provincial capital on the Euphrates River after security forces pulled out last week.

France and Britain have been pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to condemn Assad's repression of the protests. Russia and China have suggested they might use their veto power to kill the resolution.