Syrian troops killed at least 45 civilians in a tank assault to occupy the centre of the besieged city of Hama, an activist said yesterday, in a sharp escalation of a campaign to crush an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
Thousands of civilians were fleeing the city, a bastion of protest surrounded by a ring of steel of troops with tanks and heavy weapons.
Electricity and communications have been cut off and as many as 130 people have been killed in a four-day military assault since Assad sent troops into the city on Sunday, activists say.
Reacting to the intensifying assaults on Hama and other Syrian districts, the UN Security Council condemned the use of force against civilians -- its first substantive response to nearly five months of unrest in Syria.
In Hama, residents said tanks had advanced into the main Orontes Square, the site of some of the biggest protests against Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000. Snipers spread onto rooftops and into a nearby citadel.
An activist who managed to leave the city told Reuters that 40 people were killed by heavy machinegun fire and shelling by tanks in al-Hader district on Wednesday and early yesterday.
Syrian authorities say the army has gone into Hama to confront armed groups trying to take control of the city. They say at least eight soldiers have been killed by gunmen.
The contrasting accounts from activists and state media are difficult to verify because Syria has barred most independent media since the beginning of the protests.
Rights groups said the lack of communication with the besieged city was alarming. There were also some reports that water supplies were blocked.
"Hama has been cut off. We're in the dark and of course we're very worried," said Human Rights Watch's Beirut-based senior Syria and Lebanon researcher, Nadim Houry.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 1,500 families managed to flee Hama in the last 48 hours, heading mainly to the east or the west of the besieged city. Other activists said authorities had blocked the road north towards Aleppo and Turkey.
He said seven other people were killed across Syria during protests on Wednesday night, three of them in the southern Deraa province and two in the Damascus district of Midan.
Alongside the military crackdown, Assad has also lifted a state of emergency in place for nearly 50 years and promised constitutional changes to open Syria up to multi-party politics.
Yesterday, he formally approved laws passed by the cabinet last week allowing the formation of political parties other than his ruling Baath Party and regulating elections to parliament, which has so far been a rubber-stamp assembly.
But most figures in Syria's fractured opposition reject any dialogue with Assad while the repression continues.
France yesterday slammed the move as "provocation" and said instead he should stop his deadly crackdown on democracy protests.
Source : The Daily Star
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