Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead

ANTAKYA, Turkey — Syrian security forces arrested scores of people across the country on Saturday as mourners took part in the funerals of six protesters killed Friday outside of Damascus, continuing a grim pattern of protest, death, mourning and repression that has been repeated week after week as the uprising in Syria enters its fourth month.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed in the security sweep on Saturday, according to Reuters, and two protesters were killed during the funerals.

Syria has been gripped since mid-March by an unprecedented popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled with an iron fist for over four decades. The government has cracked down hard on the protests, killing more than 1,400 people and detaining more than 10,000, according to activists, who estimate that 20 were killed on Friday, 5 of them children.

Violence in the rural northwest has driven more than 11,000 refugees into neighboring Turkey, where the Red Crescent, a local version of the Red Cross, said this week that 17,000 more were waiting to cross the rugged border. Hundreds have also crossed into Lebanon, The Associated Press reported Saturday, citing a Lebanese security official.

Pallbearers carried the coffins of the dead through the streets of the Damascus suburb of Kisweh on Saturday as a column of mourners marched behind them, clapping their hands and loudly chanting “God is great,” according to a video posted online by activists.

“We wanted a very big funeral to honor the dead and we planned to show the regime our answer to their killing,” said Ibrahim, 30, a farmer in Kisweh. “We are so angry and we will not forget our martyrs. The security men killed Hassan Shabib, who was 13 years old.”

Activists estimated the number of mourners in Kisweh at 30,000, although the video posted online appears to show far fewer. Syria bars most foreign journalists from entering the country so it is difficult to verify the accounts of either the government or its opponents.

As mourners in Kisweh buried their dead, security forces continued a wave of mass arrests in towns and villages across the country that activists and residents said began after midnight Friday.

In Kisweh, dozens of people were arrested on Saturday and one was killed, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, a grass-roots group.

Many residents were nervous, hiding in their homes and unwilling to talk to a visiting reporter out of fear of possible government retribution.

Activists from the Coordinating Committees said there were also dozens of arrests in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, where three people were wounded and one person, Riad al-Shayb, 18, was killed.

A human rights activist in Damascus, who declined to be identified for fear of government retribution, called the situation in Kisweh and Barzeh “tense,” and said he expected the government to come down hard there in a bid to crush protests in the capital that activists said have drawn ever larger crowds.

The Coordinating Committees said there were also mass arrests Saturday in Homs, Syria’s third largest city; Mare’a, a suburb of Aleppo; and the villages of Khan Sheikhoun and Jebel Zawiyah in the restive northern province of Idlib, where security forces have reportedly used scorched-earth tactics in recent weeks as part of a drive to retake a string of towns that appeared to have fallen beyond their control.

The Committees had no estimate of the number of people detained. A spokesman for the group, Hozan Ibrahim, said they were primarily young people, a trend that he said reflected fear on the part of the authorities.

“They are scared,” he said. “Young people are the ones organizing the demonstrations and this is the last thing they want to happen.”

In Kisweh, hundreds of soldiers prowled the streets on Saturday in what local residents described as a manhunt for young people believe to have taken part in antigovernment protests. Backed by at least 15 tanks, uniformed soldiers from Syria’s conscript army went from house to house bearing a list of the names of wanted men.

“They have lists with the names of pro-democracy activists who are behind the demonstrations,” said a resident who identified himself as Abu Muhammad, 45, a public employee. “The regime intends to punish us.”

He said checkpoints barred anyone from entering the town, squeezed between the capital and the Danoun Palestinian refugee camp 12 miles south of Damascus.

“I wanted to go to work this morning but I saw a large number of soldiers with uniforms standing near two tanks and they told me you cannot leave Kisweh today, go back home, no work today,” said Abu Muhammad. “The soldiers blocked all of the entrances to Kisweh and won’t allow anyone to leave it.”

An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.

via Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead – NYTimes.com.