A 12-year-old boy was among several people killed yesterday as Syrian troops hunted down opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in two restive cities, activists said, despite world anger over the bloody crackdown.
The military said six troops, including three officers, were killed in clashes as the army pursued “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Banias and around the southern town of Daraa – three protest hubs.
Tanks rumbled into several districts of the central industrial city of Homs and deployed along the corniche in the northwestern coastal city of Banias, activists said.
Judicial authorities, meanwhile, charged prominent dissident and former MP Riad Seif, a 64-year-old who suffers from cancer, with violating a ban on protests, his lawyer Khalil Maatuk said.
The military on Saturday night cut electricity and communications before entering several Homs districts that are home to opponents of Assad’s regime, a day after having taken up positions inside the city, an activist said.
Gunfire reverberated in Bab Baba and Sebaa Amr, two neighbourhoods in the city of one million inhabitants that has been the scene of almost daily demonstrations since protests in Syria erupted mid-March.
A video posted online at YouTube – which could not be authenticated – showed around 20 truckloads of soldiers heading into the night towards a Homs district.
Qassem Zuheir al-Ahmad, 12, was killed by gunfire in the city, where other people also died, said an activist who was unable to specify who shot the boy or give an overall casualty toll.
“Snipers are posted on rooftops,” the activist said.
The military conducted a similar operation after cutting electricity, communications and water in the Mediterranean port city of Banias, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“The city is isolated from the rest of the world,” Abdel Rahman said and warned against a “a humanitarian catastrophe in the southern districts” of Banias, where 20,000 people live. The city has a total population of 50,000.
“Tanks have been positioned on the corniche and in the southern neighbourhoods of Banias and people have been arrested,” he said, adding that security forces had “lists of names” of people they want detained.
More than 250 people, including a 10-year-old, were arrested during raids Saturday night and yesterday in Banias, the Observatory said.
Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the government, said the army was locked “in a fierce battle against groups using heavy weapons, anti-tank rockets and machine guns” in and around Banias since Friday night.
A member of Syria’s banned Socialist Union party told AFP in Beirut he had fled his home outside Damascus after being told by other activists that he would be arrested.
“Our society is dominated by fear,” Mujab Assamara, 33, said.