The Syrian government has said that 10 civilian workers were killed by an "armed terrorist gang" in a bus ambush near the city of Homs.
The official state news agency carried images of the bus that it said was returning from Lebanon on Sunday when it was attacked.
The agency quoted a doctor at a hospital in Homs as saying the bodies bore the mark of bullets shot at close range into the head, chest and stomach.
The authorities have blamed armed gangs backed by foreign powers for the violence during Syria's seven week uprising against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Human rights campaigners cast doubt on the incident near Homs, the country's third largest city, where army and security presence is heavy.
They said scores of unarmed protesters, including a 12-year-old child, had been killed by security forces in the city and no independent observers were allowed to verify official accounts.
Troops backed by tanks entered residential areas in Homs and Tafas, a town in the south, in the early hours of Sunday amid the sound of gunfire, activists say.
Night rally attacked
In the eastern city of Deir El-Zour, a witness said that Syrian forces killed at least two unarmed demonstrators on Sunday when they opened fire on a night rally.
"There are two bodies on the ground and no one can reach them. There is still gunfire and people are fleeing the scene," the witness told Reuters from the Old Airport district of the tribal city.
Deir El-Zour, the centre of Syria's oil production, has been witnessing rallies that have attracted up to 4,000 people each night since security forces killed four pro-democracy protesters on Friday, residents said.
Demonstrators earlier tore down a golden statue of President Assad's elder brother, Basil, who had been the presumed heir to the former president, Hafez Assad.
In the coastal city of Baniyas, two pro-democracy leaders and at least 250 people were detained there since army units stormed the coastal city the day before, a rights organisation said.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sheikh Anas Airout, preacher of the main Rahman mosque in the city and prominent activist Bassam Sahyouni were seized by security forces.
A Syrian rights campaigner told the AFP news agency that security forces killed four women who were among about 150 people demonstrating on the main coastal highway from Marqab village, near Baniyas, calling for the release of detained people.
"Members of the security forces asked them to leave and, when they refused to do so, they opened fire killing three of them and wounding five others who were hospitalised," the activist said.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that a 10-year-old boy was also arrested in what appeared to be a move designed to punish the child's parents.
"Baniyas is a city of ghosts today, it's empty and totally isolated from the rest of Syria," Ammar Qurabi of Syria's National Organisation for Human Rights said.
"There's a de facto curfew and people are not going out," Qurabi said.
Sanctions imposed
In Daraa, security forces allowed people to come out for few hours to buy essentials but then imposed a curfew.
The US imposed sanctions on three senior Syrian officials as well as Syria's intelligence agency over the crackdown.
The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on Syrian officials soon, and the UN said on Saturday that it was sending a team into Syria to investigate the situation.
Rights groups said 27 protesters were shot dead by security forces on Friday while the military said 10 soldiers and policemen were killed in Homs by "armed terrorist groups".
The Committee of the Martyrs of the 15 March Revolution, which has been keeping a tally of the dead, puts the death toll at 708.
Syrian authorities have banned foreign media from reporting from the country. As a result of these restrictions, Al Jazeera cannot independently verify these figures.
Meanwhile, concerns remain for the welfare of Dorothy Parvaz, an Al Jazeera journalist, who has not been heard from since she
arrived in the capital, Damascus, more than a week ago.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
|
No comments:
Post a Comment