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US evacuates some staff, ups pressure on Syria

The United States has ordered embassy families and some staff out of Syria as it has hardened its tone on Damascus’s crackdown on protests without calling for President Bashar al-Assad to go.
The State Department late Monday ordered embassy family members and some non-emergency personnel to leave Syria, after an earlier travel warning telling US citizens to leave the country because of escalating attacks on
protesters.
At the same time, Washington has defended the presence of a US ambassador in Damascus, who only arrived after a six-year absence in January, as Assad’s forces deployed tanks and snipers, killing at least 25 people in a key town.
“The brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people is completely deplorable and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday.
The United States is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown and make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.
The Syrian people’s call for freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the ability to freely choose their leaders must be heard.”Washington has issued repeated statements by senior officials including President Barack Obama calling for an end to violence and political reform in Syria, but has faced criticism for not taking more concrete steps.
But Monday’s crackdown appeared to mark a point at which the administration – which has sought to engage Syria as a key regional power player – had little choice but to be seen to act more robustly.
As well as the crackdown in the town of Daraa, a focal point of protests, Syrian troops also on Monday launched assaults on the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Al-Maadamiyeh, witnesses said.
Some 390 people have been killed in security crackdowns since protests erupted in Syria in mid-March, according to rights activists and witnesses.

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