Security forces yesterday killed at least four people and made sweeping arrests, activists said, as Western states sought a special session of the UN human rights body on Syria’s crackdown on dissent.
The central committee of the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, meanwhile met for the first time since protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted in mid-March, pro-government daily Al-Watan said.
A key demand of the opposition movement has been the removal of Article 8 of the Constitution which stipulates that the Baath party is the sole “leader of state and society ”.
But in defiance of growing international condemnation, hundreds of Syrian security forces raided homes in the Mediterranean port city of Latakia yesterday, activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 700 members of the security services had taken part in operations in the city’s southern district of Ramel, arresting people on lists.
“Heavy gunfire continued in most opposition neighbourhoods” overnight, the group said.
In a village in Idlib province near the border with Turkey, security forces shot dead a man standing on his balcony, it said.
In Homs, a sniper shot dead a civilian in its Armenian neighbourhood. Meanwhile, security forces conducting raids in the city of central Syria shot dead two men and wounded three others, the observatory said.
It said security forces in Damascus carried out dawn raids in Rukn Eddin district, where electricity was cut off, and arrested dozens of activists. Dozens more were detained overnight on the outskirts of the capital.
European countries, the United States and Kuwait are to ask the United Nations top human rights body to hold a special session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria, diplomats in Geneva said.
The United Nations announced yesterday that it has withdrawn non-essential staff from the country. “We have pulled more than 20 personnel out of Syria,” said the office of UN Lebanon representative Michael Williams.
Today, the world body’s Security Council is due to hold a special session on Syria, with the participation of the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay.
Rights groups say the crackdown has killed 1,827 civilians since mid-March, while 416 security forces have also died in what the authorities have termed a campaign against terrorists and armed gangs.
On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague stepped up the pressure and warned that Assad was “fast losing the last shreds of his legitimacy”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Arab heavyweight Saudi Arabia and Syria’s neighbour Turkey to press President Assad to step down.
Switzerland yesterday widened its sanctions against the Assad regime, adding 12 individuals to a list of key players under financial embargo and travel restriction.
But the head of Russia’s arms export agency said Moscow was continuing to supply weapons to its traditional ally Damascus.