At least 10 die in Syria, Assad vows to be firm

AFP/Damascus

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (Sana) shows President Bashar al-Assad addressing a first meeting of the central committee of the ruling Baath party in Damascus yesterday

Security forces yesterday killed at least 10 people and made sweeping arrests, activists said, as Western and Arab countries sought a special UN session on Syria’s crackdown on dissent. President Bashar al-Assad, meanwhile, met with the central committee of the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, for the first time since protests erupted in mid-March against his regime, the state-run Sana news agency reported. A defiant Assad told the committee that Syria “will remain strong and resilient” despite international pressure, adding that he had promised reforms not because of outside pressure but “because Syrians were convinced of their necessity.” Since April, the embattled president has tried to quell the growing protests, first ending a state of emergency in force since 1963, and more recently authorising political parties alongside the Baath party. A key demand of the opposition movement has been the removal of Article 8 of the constitution which stipulates that the Baath party is the sole “leader of state and society.” But in defiance of growing international condemnation, hundreds of Syrian security services raided homes in the Mediterranean port city of Latakia yesterday, activists said. The Britain-based-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 700 members of the security services took part in operations in the city’s southern district of Ramel, arresting people on lists. In the central city of Homs, nine people, including a civilian shot dead by a sniper in the city’s Armenian neighbourhood, were killed by security forces, activists in the city said. The Observatory said that regime forces opened fire on worshippers at a mosque in the city’s Wa’ar district last night, wounding five people. Arab countries—Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar—alongside European countries and the US, are to ask the UN’s top human rights body to hold a special session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria, diplomats in Geneva said. Today, the world body’s Security Council is due to hold a special session on Syria, with the participation of the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay. The UN yesterday said it had withdrawn about 25 international staff and dozens of families of expatriate workers from Syria because of mounting security fears. Tunisia, meanwhile, announced yesterday it is recalling its ambassador to Syria. Switzerland yesterday widened its sanctions against the Assad regime, adding 12 individuals to a list of key players under financial embargo and travel restriction. But the head of Russia’s arms export agency said Moscow was continuing to supply weapons to its traditional ally Damascus. “While no sanctions are announced, while there are no orders or directions from the government, we are obliged to fulfil our contractual obligations, which we are now doing,” Rosoboronexport chief Anatoly Isaikin said. Since Sunday, more than 30 civilians have been killed in Latakia in a military offensive during which gunboats went into action for the first time since the start of pro-democracy revolts in mid-March, according to activists.