Syrian forces storm further two towns

SYRIA’S army stormed another two towns yesterday in pursuit of anti-regime protesters, activists said, in defiance of Western calls for action after a “chilling” UN Security Council briefing.

Tanks, troop carriers and buses transporting security force members sped soon after dawn into the town of Saraqeb in the northwestern Idlib province bordering Turkey, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“Shooting was heard soon afterwards in the town, where protests demanding the fall of the regime have been staged every day after the evening (Muslim) prayers,” the statement said.

Later the rights advocacy group reported that security forces were “raiding homes and carrying out arrests, rounding up more than 100 people, including 35 children.”

“Army troops are smashing the doors of shops owned by activists in search of them, and they have cut off electricity in the town,” a statement said.

Further south, in the central province of Homs, columns of tanks entered Qusayr early yesterday, a rights activist in the town said, reached by telephone.

“Residents fled into the fields and all communications have been cut with the town,” the activist said.

The operations came a day after security forces reportedly shot dead 18 people in the Baba Amro neighbourhood of the city of Homs, according to the latest toll provided by the Syrian Observatory.

“The number of those wounded has risen to over 100, some of them in critical condition, and residents from Baba Amro have begun to flee looking for safer places in the city,” a statement said.

It said heavy machine gun fire rattled Baba Amro well into yesterday morning.

The latest assault comes after UN assistant secretary-general Oscar Fernandez-Taranco on Wednesday briefed the 15-member Security Council about events in Syria in the week since the council called for an “immediate” halt to the violence.

Taranco, who spoke behind closed doors, was quoted as saying there had been no let-up in the deaths of protesters while UN officials had met Syrian diplomats to try to get accurate information.

Taranco’s briefing had been “depressing and chilling,” Britain’s deputy UN ambassador Philip Parham later told reporters.

Western envoys said the Security Council would have to consider “further action” if events did not improve and pressed for a new report next week.

Ignoring the international outrage, President Bashar al-Assad this week pledged a relentless battle against “terrorist groups” Damascus says are fomenting a popular uprising across Syria.

Rights groups say more than 2,000 people have been killed in the crackdown on the protest movement, which first erupted in mid-March with calls for reform.