Syrians rally for more Arab action

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have protested nine months into their uprising, demanding the Arab League hasten its response to a bloody crackdown on dissent that brought more deaths yesterday, activists said.

The protests came after Russia, a long-time ally of embattled President Bashar al-Assad, drew a guarded response from Western governments to signs of toughening its stance on Syria at the UN Security Council.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 200,000 protested in the besieged central city of Homs alone, venting their frustration at the Arab League for postponing a meeting on Syria scheduled for today.Security forces reacted with gunfire, killing at least 10 people, seven of them in Homs, where “more than 200,000 demonstrators came out in several neighbourhoods of the city after Friday prayers,” the group said.

Demonstrators also took to the streets of Damascus and the protest hubs of Daraa, Deir Ezzor and Hama, according to the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), which organises the protests.

Organisers had urged protesters to press the 22-member Arab bloc over its postponement of the emergency foreign ministers’ meeting to give more time for Damascus to agree to a deal to end the bloodshed to avoid sanctions.

They had set the slogan for the protests as: “The Arab League is killing us – enough deadlines.”

On November 27, the Arab bloc approved a package of sanctions against Damascus after it failed to meet a deadline to agree to an observer mission to monitor implementation of an Arab plan to protect Syrian civilians.