Syrian troops killed at least three people as they pounded Latakia and raided other towns on yesterday, activists said, as Washington and Riyadh demanded that Damascus “immediately” halt its crackdown.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two people were killed and 15 wounded, four of them critically, during a military operation in the southern Latakia area of Ramleh, a nerve centre of anti-regime protests.
One of the casualties was a 17-year-old man, the Observatory said.
The watchdog said earlier that military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, converged on Ramleh during a “large demonstration calling for the fall of (President Bashar al-) Assad’s regime.
The Observatory said the deployment of troops sparked an exodus of residents, especially women and children.
Security forces raided the Asaliba district, also in the Mediterranean city, arresting “more than 70 people” in a door-to-door crackdown, it said, adding that women who resisted the arrest of their children were harassed and beaten.
“There was heavy gunfire and explosions,” in Asaliba, the Observatory said.
An activist in the Homs region of central Syria said troops backed by two tanks also entered the village of Jussiyeh which borders Lebanon, triggering a stampede across the frontier and to neighbouring areas.
Military vehicles, meanwhile, swooped on the town of Qusayr, also in Homs province, where security and intelligence services carried out arrests and killed one person, the Observatory said.
“Ten military trucks, seven security vehicles and 15 buses full of pro-regime militiamen en-tered these villages,” said security services.
In the town of Huleh, also in Homs province, families received the corpses of four relatives who had been arrested in the past few days, the Observatory said.
Security forces backed by tanks have been trying to crush dissent city by city and town by town since pro-democracy protests erupted in mid-March. The Observatory says 2,150 people have been confirmed dead since then – 1,744 civilians and 406 members of the security forces.
US President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah yester-day demanded in a telephone conversation that the Syrian regime “immediately” halt its crackdown on protesters, the White House said.
“The two leaders expressed their shared, deep concerns about the Syrian government’s use of violence against its citizens,” and “agreed that the Syrian regime’s brutal campaign of violence against the Syrian people must end immediately,” it said.
Activists said at least 20 people were killed last Friday when security forces opened fire on thousands of anti-regime protesters who rallied in flashpoint cities after Muslim weekly prayers, updating earlier tolls.
State television, meanwhile, said “two security agents were shot dead by armed men in Douma,” a suburb of the capital.