21 civilians killed as Syrian army shells town to quell dissent

Syrian forces shelled a town in the country's north yesterday and opened fire on scattered nationwide protests against the regime of president Bashar al-Assad, killing at least 21 people.

Hundreds more Syrians streamed across the border into Turkey, trying to escape the violence, taking the total number of refugees to nearly 4,000.

A Syrian opposition figure said that thousands of protesters overwhelmed security officers and set fire to the courthouse and police station in the northern town of Maaret al-Numan, and the army responded with tank shells.

Syria's state-run television appeared to confirm at least part of the report, saying gunmen opened fire on police stations in Maaret al-Numan, causing casualties among security forces.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, a group that documents anti-government protests in Syria, said 10 of the 21 deaths yesterday were in the north-western province of Idlib.

The group said many of the casualties were in Maaret al-Numan.

Twenty five miles to the west in the same province, Syrian troops backed by dozens of tanks massed outside the town of Jisr al-Shughour and shelled nearby villages. Syrian TV said troops reached the entrances of the town and detained members of "armed groups."

According to activists, many of the troops belong to the army's elite 4th Division, which is commanded by al-Assad's younger brother, Maher. The use of the loyalist forces could reflect the regime's concern about whether regular military units would remain loyal if called upon to crush dissent.

Other protests in Syria occurred in neighbourhoods in the capital, Damascus, and the major city of Aleppo, which are vital to al-Assad's authoritarian regime.

Syrians who escaped into Turkey depicted a week of revolt and mayhem in Jisr al-Shughour, saying police turned their guns on each other and soldiers shed their uniforms rather than fire on protesters. Syrian TV said the operation aimed to restore security in the town, where authorities say 120 officers and security personnel were killed by gunmen last week.

A Syrian refugee at a camp in Turkey accused Syrian forces of attacking civilians.

"Bashar Assad is killing his own people in order to stay in power," Abdulkerim Haji Yousef said, standing behind a fence at one of three camps set up for Syrians.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has attempted to use his close ties to al-Assad in an attempt to press the Syrian leader to make concessions to the protesters, described the crackdown as "savagery."

Syria's government has a history of violent retaliation against dissent, including a three-week bombing campaign against the city of Hama that crushed an uprising there in 1982. Jisr al-Shughour itself came under government shelling in 1980, with a reported 70 people killed.

Citing contacts inside Syria, Rami Abdul-Rahman, the London-based head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 10,000 soldiers were involved in the advance on Jisr al-Shughour.

Jisr al-Shughour is a predominantly Sunni town with some Alawite and Christian villages nearby. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslim, but the ruling elite belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.