Syrian forces pursued a deadly crackdown on anti-regime dissent yesterday, killing 11 people in a “vengeance” raid on a town near Damascus and arresting hundreds in operations outside the capital, activists said.
The latest violence came as some 200 Syrian youth activists opened a four-day meeting in Istanbul, to discuss ways of improving coordination among groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
The dawn raid targeted the town of Kanaker, west of Damascus, Ammar Qorabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights, said in Nicosia.
“The security forces entered homes at dawn on Wednesday and during the operation 11 people were shot dead and more than 250 arrested,” said Mr Qorabi, providing AFP with the names of the all the victims.
He said the operation in Kanaker, a town of 25,000 people, was backed by “a bulldozer and army tanks” and targeted people aged between 15 and 40.
He added that at least 11 vehicles were used to carry away those arrested in the swoop, as electricity, water and the internet were cut.
According to Mr Qorabi, the raid was an “act of vengeance” because inhabitants had supplied provisions to anti-regime protesters in the southern city of Daraa, the main hub of protests against Assad’s hardline rule, when it was besieged by troops earlier this year.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a statement emailed to AFP, named eight people it said were killed in yesterday’s crackdown in Kanaker.
It said troops and security forces stormed Kanaker at dawn under the cover of heavy gunfire. “Residents of Kanaker threw stones at the tanks” and set tyres ablaze to block their approach and chanted Allah-o-Akbar. According to the Observatory, seven tanks initially were positioned at the west side of town, seven at the main entrance while four entered from the east side along with a bulldozer.
The four tanks tanks later withdrew from the eastern gates of the town under a barrage of stones while residents re-erected barricades destroyed by the bulldozer.
“Mosques in the town were turned into field hospitals,” to treat those wounded in the raid, the Observatory added.
The Observatory said that authorities have imposed a curfew on Daraa since Saturday while troops were tightening controls at entrances of the town, where the anti-regime protests erupted in mid-March.
Earlier the group reported that a man was killed on Tuesday at a checkpoint in the Damascus suburb of Harasta and his body later taken to a military hospital.
It also reported a raid on the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh, quoting witnesses on the ground.