Syria freed 260 political detainees in the biggest overture yet to protesters demanding reform, as demonstrators in the south yesterday torched an office of President Bashar al-Assad’s Baath party.
The Syria protests, which began on March 15, have turned deadly, with 15 people officially confirmed killed in clashes between demonstrators and security forces.
In Tafas, south of the capital Damascus, angry residents set ablaze a police station and the local headquarters of the Baath party, which has ruled Syria single-handedly for close to half a century.
The residents had gathered yesterday for the burial of three demonstrators who had been shot dead by security forces in rallies the previous day, said a rights activist, requesting his name be withheld.
In nearby Daraa, a tribal town that has emerged as the symbol of the Syrian protests, some 300 shirtless young men yesterday climbed on the rubble of a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar, shouting anti-regime slogans, witnesses said.
In a brazen move in a country known for its iron clutch on security, Daraa demonstrators last Friday tore down the statue and burned the home of the governor.
In the northern city of Latakia, “armed men” on rooftops fired at passers-by yestreday, a Syrian official said, without disclosing whether there had been any casualties.
Another official, contacted by AFP, voiced fears that what began as just, economic demands in the agricultural town could be turned into sectarian-based political unrest.
Syrian authorities have announced a string of reforms in an apparent bid to appease the increasingly angry demonstrators, including the possibility of ending emergency rule which has been in place since 1963.
Rights groups yesterday said 260 political detainees had been freed from the notorious Saydnaya prison, north of the capital Damascus, in the biggest concession yet.
“Syrian authorities have freed 260 detainees from Saydnaya prison, mainly Islamists but also including 14 Kurds, in a move that comes as part of the promises authorities made recently to boost freedom in Syria,” Abdul Karim Rihawi, president of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights, told AFP.
A high-ranking official confirmed the release of detainees but would not give a number.
The release came came one day after 15 people were officially confirmed killed in demonstrations across the country, where Assad is facing unprecedented domestic pressure.
Activists put yesterday death toll at more than 25, while Amnesty International said 55 people were killed during a week of unrest in and around Daraa.
Authorities have clamped down on demonstrations in the capital, and Daraa has emerged as the hub of the protests and has sustained the most casualties as resident continue to hit the streets.
But access to Daraa has been restricted, and a team of AFP reporters were escorted by security forces out of the town yesterday.
Despite a call on Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011 for massive protests yesterday, there were no signs of any demonstration in the capital Damascus.
AFP reporters have witnessed activists being dragged away by plain-clothes security forces from two separate protests at the landmark Omayyed mosque over the past week.
Thousands of Assad supporters have also flooded the streets of Damascus on foot and in cars and buses by night last Thursday and Friday, chanting their loyalty to the Baath party and the Assads in counter-protests that continue into the early morning.
The crackdown by Syrian authorities on the protests has drawn harsh rebukes from the UN, EU and the US, which has issued the latest of an almost daily string of condemnations.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday warned Syria the violent crackdown on “reformist” protests risked plunging the country into a “downward spiral” of violence.