Reuters/Amman
Security forces deployed in a suburb of the Syrian capital and in the city of Banias yesterday, witnesses said, even as President Bashar al-Assad drew international criticism for sending in tanks to crush a revolt. In Daraa, the city where the uprising against Assad’s 11-year rule began, authorities sent in tanks on Monday and witnesses said the army was firing randomly and bodies were lying on the streets. Residents said an army brigade led by Assad’s younger brother Maher had cut off roads, was shelling homes, storming houses and rounding people up. International criticism of Assad’s crackdown, now in its sixth week, was initially muted but escalated after the death of 100 protesters on Friday and Assad’s decision to storm Daraa, which echoed his father’s 1982 suppression of Islamists in Hama. European governments urged Syria to end the violence. “We send a strong call to Damascus authorities to stop the violent repression of what are peaceful demonstrations,” Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Rome. Britain’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox called for reform in Syria but said there were limits to what other countries could do to halt the violence against anti-government protesters. Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal proposed the European Union suspend aid to Damascus and impose an arms embargo and sanctions against its leaders. More than 2,000 security police were deployed in the Damascus suburb of Douma yesterday, manning roadblocks and checking the identity of residents, a witness said. The witness, a former army member who did not want to be identified, said he saw several trucks in the streets equipped with heavy machineguns and said men who he believed were members of the plainclothes secret police were carrying assault rifles. Busloads of soldiers, who he believed to be Republican Guards, in full combat gear also began deploying in the suburb. Security forces also deployed in the hills around the coastal city of Banias, where demonstrators chanted: “The people want the overthrow of the regime”, a human rights activist said. Residents in Daraa, reached by telephone, said black smoke was rising from every part of the city and that heavy artillery and Kalashnikov rounds were heard from the Old City. “In the street I am in there are around 10 tanks. Their aim is just to destroy and destroy ... They are shelling homes and demolishing them,” said Abu Khaldoun. “Maher al-Assad’s forces have spread everywhere and with their roadblocks Daraa has become a big prison. You cannot go out without endangering your life,” said his cousin, Abu Tamer. “They are rounding up dozens of people and arresting them.” Residents said it was not clear how many people had been killed since the army pushed into Daraa and that they were not allowed to get to the bodies that lay in the streets. Security forces have shot dead 400 civilians in a campaign to crush the uprising against Assad’s rule, Syrian human rights organisation Sawasiah said yesterday. Another 500 people had been arrested in the last two days, it said. Washington said on Monday it was studying targeted sanctions against Syria, while in Turkey, Syrian opposition figures pleaded for international help. “Our friends in the West, in Turkey, in the Arab world, if they want to help us, then they can do that by ... putting the clearest possible pressure on the Syrian regime to stop targeting civilians,” Anas Abdah, the British-based chairman of the Movement for Justice and Development, said. Activists said the military move showed Assad had decided on force, not reforms, to deal with protests inspired by Arab uprisings which toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia. Ali al-Atassi, an activist whose father was jailed for 22 years under Hafez al-Assad, said “another Hama” was impossible, referring to the 1982 crackdown which killed thousands. “This regime doesn’t understand that the world has changed, that the Arab region has changed and that the Syrian people has changed. They are still locked in the past and those who don’t change at the right moment, they will be forced to change.” Last week Assad lifted Syria’s 48-year state of emergency and abolished a hated state security court. But the next day 100 people were killed during protests across the country. Amnesty International, citing sources in Daraa, said at least 23 people were killed when tanks shelled the city on Monday. The UN Security Council must refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, it said.