Syria vows to keep up protest crackdown

A defiant Syria yesterday vowed to restore “security and stability” despite growing international censure for its violent crushing of dissent, as activists called for more protests today.

Growing anger at the regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters saw Britain yesterday withdraw the Syrian ambassador’s invitation to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

In fact Britain abruptly withdrew the Syrian ambassador’s invitation on the eve of the Royal Wedding, saying the regime’s crackdown on protesters made it unacceptable for him to attend.

Buckingham Palace said it agreed with Foreign Secretary William Hague’s decision, following pressure from rights groups and the media, to bar envoy Sami Khiyami from today’s marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Mr Khiyami said the move was “a bit embarrassing” but it would not bother Damascus.

In the southern Syrian town of Daraa, epicentre of the protests that have shaken Mr Assad’s once uncontested rule, water and power have been cut and the death toll has risen to 42 on the fourth day of a military siege, a rights activists said.

Syria has been rocked since March 15 by increasingly strident pro-democracy demonstrations, which the authorities have tried to crush through violence that rights groups say has killed at least 453 civilians.

Information Minister Adnan Mahmud said that the crackdown would continue, despite an EU threat of sanctions and growing world pressure to allow peaceful protests.

“The authorities are determined to restore security, stability and peace to the citizens,” Mr Mahmud said. “In Daraa, the army intervened at the request of the population to restore security.”

According to the minister, more than 50 soldiers and dozens of police have been killed and hundreds injured since the revolt began.

Further showdowns are expected after the weekly main Muslim prayers today, when protesters traditionally emerge from mosques to stage mass street demonstrations.

“Friday of Anger, April 29, in solidarity with Daraa,” says a notice on the Syrian Revolution 2011 page of Facebook, a motor of the protests in which demonstrators inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world are seeking greater freedoms.

“To the youths of the revolution, tomorrow we will be in all the places, in all the streets ... We will gather at the besieged towns, including with our brothers in Daraa,” said the statement posted online on Thursday.

It said demonstrations would also be staged in other flashpoint towns such as Homs in the centre of the country and Banias in the northwest.

A rights activist reached by telephone said the situation was worsening in Daraa, stormed on Monday by between 3,000 and 5,000 troops backed by tanks and snipers.

“We have neither doctors nor medical supplies, not even baby milk. The electricity is always cut and we haven’t any more water,” Abdallah Abazid said in Nicosia by telephone from Daraa, 100 kilometres south of Damascus.

At least 42 “martyrs” have been killed since Monday, Abazid said. Their families, he added, had been unable to bury them because “security forces were firing on anybody visiting the cemetery,” which is controlled by the army.