Seven killed as Syria bloodshed spills into neighouring Lebanon

A total of at least seven people were killed yesterday as the Syrian army pounded the town of Tall Kalakh, northwest of the capital Damascus, an activist said on condition of anonymity.

“At least seven people, including two women, were killed by security forces who are indiscriminately shelling four districts in the town,” the activist said on the telephone, quoting witnesses.

He said there were probably more casualties but that so far the names of the seven who were killed had been confirmed.

The toll included three people reported to have been killed in Tall Kalakh earlier by a local resident who said the army had deployed heavily in the town and that there were many injured who could not be evacuated.

Elsewhere, a woman fleeing the town of some 25,000 residents also died earlier yesterday as she attempted to cross into neighbouring Lebanon, a short distance from Tall Kalakh.

Hundreds of people have fled Tall Kalakh in recent days amid a brutal crackdown by authorities bidding to crush an unprecedented revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Pope Benedict XVI lamented the bloodshed and called for “cohabitation” between the authorities and anti-regime protesters.

A Lebanese security official said gunfire from Syria raked a crowd at Al-Boqayah crossing, near north Lebanon’s border town of Wadi Khaled, killing the woman and injuring five other people, including a Lebanese soldier.

The shooting came as hundreds of Syrians fled on foot to Lebanon for the second consecutive day.

The Pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome’s St Peter’s Square: “I ask God that there be no further bloodshed in (Syria), this country of great religions and civilisations.

“It is urgent to restore cohabitation,” he said, calling on “the authorities and citizens to spare no effort in the search for the common good, recognising legitimate aspirations for a future of peace and stability.”

Yesterday, Syrian authorities freed several dissidents who had been held in connection with the unrest, including prominent opposition figure Riad Seif and rights activist Catherine Talli, human rights groups said.

But in the western town of Tall Kalakh near Lebanon’s border, a local resident reached by telephone said that snipers stationed on rooftops had killed three men as they left a sit-in protest in a mosque.

Syrian troops were deployed in force in the town of some 25,000 inhabitants, he said.

The man, who spoke as gunfire rattled in the background, spoke of many wounded on the streets but said that local residents were too scared to venture out to offer help.

His account could not be independently verified as Syrian authorities have all but sealed off the country to foreign journalists as they seek to crush unprecedented protests threatening Mr Assad’s authoritarian regime.

Up to 850 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the protests started in mid-March, rights groups say.