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Syrian forces shell town kill 41, lawyer says

Syrian forces killed 41 civilians in an effort to crush pro-democracy protests, a human rights lawyer said on Wednesday, as opposition leaders met in Turkey to plot the downfall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Lawyer Razan Zaitouna told Reuters by telephone from Damascus the 41 dead in Rastan included a four-year-old girl killed as government forces shelled the
central town on Tuesday.Five of them were buried in Rastan on Wednesday, she said.
Syrian forces also killed nine civilians on Tuesday in the town of Hirak, rights campaigner Ammar Qurabi said on Wednesday.
The nine, among them three doctors, one dentist and an 11-year-old girl, were killed by snipers and during the storming of houses in Hirak, where tanks had deployed this week, Qurabi, who heads the Syrian Human Rights Organisation, told Reuters.
Rights groups say 1,000 civilians have been killed as Assad seeks to crush a revolt which has turned into the gravest challenge to his 11-year rule. The severity of the crackdown has provoked international condemnation and sanctions.
“The revolution inside Syria has declared ‘the people want the overthrow of the regime’. We echo it. The price of the blood being shed can only be freedom,” Abdelrazzaq Eid, a senior figure in the Damascus Declaration umbrella opposition group, told a conference in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya.
The gathering is the first official meeting of activists and opposition figures in exile since protests erupted 10 weeks ago in Deraa, a poor, agricultural city in southern Syria.
“The dictatorship has presented nothing to show a modicum of good intentions. It has lost any legitimacy by firing at and killing its own people,” Eid said, to the applause of delegates.
Syrian authorities blame armed groups, backed by Islamists and foreign agitators, for the unrest and say more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed.
The meeting in Turkey brought together a broad spectrum of opposition figures driven abroad over the last 30 years, from Islamists crushed in the 1980s, to fleeing Christians.
A regional Middle East player, Assad has sought since succeeding his father in 2000 to maintain Syria as an ally of Iran and supporter of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah while seeking better ties with the West and peace with Israel.
But Assad’s handling of the protests has triggered US and EU sanctions on members of the ruling hierarchy, including himself, after four years of detente with the West. Syria’s backer Turkey has also begun to criticise Assad.

19:33 | |

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