BEIRUT — Anti-government protesters in the Syrian city of Hama set up barricades and took up sticks and stones to defend themselves Monday after one of the bloodiest days so far in the regime’s campaign to quell an uprising now in its fifth month.
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The protesters vowed not to allow a repeat of 1982, when thousands of people were killed in Hama after President Bashar Assad’s father ordered a massacre.
As evening fell, residents said Syrian tanks resumed intense shelling of the restive city and troops fired machine guns at worshippers about to head to mosques for special nighttime prayers on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Residents had just broken their daily dawn-to-dusk fast.
It was the second day of shelling of Hama and other cities. In attacks earlier in the day, four people were killed in Hama and three more were killed in other parts of the country, residents and rights groups said.
“It’s a crime! Where is the world? Why doesn’t anyone see?” cried one distraught Hama resident through the phone, the sound of gunfire heard in the background. The residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said they were certain there were evening casualties, but there was no immediate word on numbers.
The current crackdown is believed to be aimed at preventing protests from swelling during Ramadan. Muslims throng mosques during the holy month for the special nightly prayers after breaking their daytime fasts. Gatherings at mosques have in the past triggered anti-government protests.
Sunday’s violence left 74 people dead throughout the country, 55 of them from Hama and neighboring villages, according to a statement issued by six Syrian rights groups.
The attacks drew harsh rebukes from the U.S. and Europe, which expanded its sanctions against Syria, imposing asset freezes and travel bans against five more military and government officials Monday.
The EU decision brings the number of individuals targeted by the EU to 35, including President Bashar Assad. Four government entities are also on the list.
The EU said it would release the names of the new additions to the list today.
“We find these violent attempts by the Syrian regime to target civilians on the eve of Ramadan to be despicable and abhorrent,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
In Hama, many people were too frightened to venture out after the evening shellfire, but a few groups of people staged scattered protests in the city’s main Assi square.
Elsewhere, tens of thousands of Syrians in the central city of Homs, Damascus suburbs and areas of the south marched out of mosques after evening prayers chanting slogans of support for the people of Hama and calling for the downfall of the regime.
The Observatory for Human Rights said security forces opened fire on protesters in the Damascus suburb of Moadamiya, killing one and wounding five others. Troops also opened fire on a protest in Homs, but there was no word on casualties.
The international community has grown increasingly angered by the Assad regime’s attacks against civilians but has so far refrained from calling on him to step down. On Monday, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said there would be no international military intervention in Syria.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed consultations on Syria late Monday at Germany’s request.
Germany, Britain, France and Portugal have tried unsuccessfully since April to get the U.N.’s most powerful body to condemn Syrian attacks on unarmed civilians. The United States strongly supports their efforts and a draft resolution the Europeans circulated in late May, but they have faced opposition from veto-wielding Russia and China as well as South Africa, Brazil and India, which holds the council presidency this month.
“Our intention at that meeting is to circulate an updated version of our resolution, and we are thinking of calling negotiations at the ambassadorial level tomorrow morning on that text,” Britain’s ambassador to the U.N., Mark Lyall Grant, said Monday. “There are some indications that positions are shifting.”
Russia voiced concern Monday over the loss of lives in Hama. The Russian Foreign Ministry urged the Syrian government to stop violence immediately and give up provocation and repression.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that “in these horrifying circumstances, France hopes more than ever that the United Nations Security Council will shoulder its responsibilities by speaking out loud and clear.”
Hama is a religiously conservative city of about 800,000 people some 130 miles north of the capital, Damascus. The city largely has fallen out of government control since June as residents turned on the regime and blockaded the streets against encroaching tanks.
Hama-based activist Omar Hamawi said by telephone Monday that “residents are committed to resistance through peaceful means.”
The city’s streets are full of barriers as well as thousands of men “who are ready to defend the city with stones,” he said. “People will not surrender this time. We will not allow a repetition of what happened in 1982.”
About 1,700 civilians have been killed since the largely peaceful protests against Assad’s regime began in mid-March, according to tallies by activists. The regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists are behind it.
Assad said in remarks published Monday in the army’s As-Shaab magazine that he remains confident his government will quell the uprising, which he said is aimed at “fragmenting the country as a prelude for fragmenting the entire region.”
YEMEN
Government airstrikes killed at least 15 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants in southern Yemen on Monday, military official said.
The strikes also destroyed a tank that militants had seized and several artillery positions in the Dufas area near Zinjibar. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with army rules.
The airstrikes were the latest in a government campaign to try to dislodge al-Qaida-linked militants from Zinjibar and the nearby town of Jaar.
A deteriorating security situation has spread across the impoverished, heavily armed country since the popular uprising against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh began six months ago. Emboldened by the turmoil, Yemen’s active al-Qaida branch has been seeking to capture and hold territory in the south.
Also Monday, in the city of Taiz, a hotbed of anti-Saleh protests, two soldiers and one fighter from an anti-government tribe were killed in clashes that have continued for weeks. The armed tribesmen there said they came to protect protesters after a deadly government crackdown.
In separate violence, a medical official said two people were killed in Arhab, north of the capital, Sana, because of shelling by government troops.
EGYPT
Egyptian forces swinging electrified batons and shouting the battle cry “God is great” swiftly chased off dozens of activists Monday who had refused to end four weeks of renewed protests at Tahrir Square to pressure the country’s transitional military rulers.
Hundreds of riot police backed by armored vehicles and soldiers moved in to tear down the camp of dozens of tents after a group of holdout activists — some of them relatives of people killed in the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February — refused pleas over loudspeakers to go home. Some in the crowd hurled stones at the police. Firing shots in the air and using clubs, Egyptian forces cleared the square within minutes.
Mubarak’s trial on charges he ordered the killing of protesters is to start Wednesday.
Many see the trial of the 83-year old president as a key test for the tense relationship between the protest movement and the ruling generals who took over when Mubarak was forced out on Feb. 11 after nearly 30 years in power. Activists have accused them of dragging their feet with prosecutions of regime figures and said they have so far failed to weed out Mubarak loyalists from the judiciary, police and civil service.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam, Bassem Mroue, Matt Lee, Edith M. Lederer, Slobodan Lakic, Ahmed Al-Haj, Sarah El Deeb and Aya Batrawy of The Associated Press; and by Flavia Krause-Jackson, Bill Varner, Brian Parkin, Massoud A. Derhally, Ilya Arkhipov, Patrick Henry, Nicole Gaouette and Gregory Viscusi of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/02/2011