Syrian forces continue clampdown amid sanctions move by EU

Syrian security forces in vehicles mounted with machine-guns raided districts outside the capital, Damascus, before dawn yesterday.

The raids were the latest assault on dissent in Syria as the regime tries to crush an uprising against president Bashar al-Assad’s rule using deadly force that the United Nations estimates has killed 2,600 people since March.

Activists said security forces carried out arrests and raids across Syria yesterday. The reports were carried by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as well as the Local Co-ordination Committees, both of which have a wide network of sources in the country. Meanwhile, European Union governments reached a preliminary agreement to ban European firms from making new investments in Syrian oil exploration, production and refining industries, EU diplomats said. Pending final approval, the latest round of Europe’s sanctions against Mr Assad’s government could go into effect next week, they said. “The goal is to strike the regime’s access to funds in the long term,” one EU diplomat said.