Aug 31, 2011
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters
Source: Yahoo News
AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops backed by tanks raided houses in the city of Hama on Wednesday, searching for activists behind five months of protest against President Bashar al-Assad, residents said.
The raids took place a day after security forces killed at least four people among crowds of demonstrators pouring out of mosques in Syria after marking the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month in which Assad intensified a crackdown on protests.
Troops swept through several cities in Ramadan, killing scores of people and triggering Western sanctions and Arab criticism, without crushing the unrest in which the United Nations says 2,000 civilians have been killed.
The protesters have also failed to unseat Assad, but they have been encouraged by the fall of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and rising international pressure on Syria, including a planned European Union embargo on the oil industry, which would disrupt vital inflows of foreign currency at Assad's disposal.
President Barack Obama's administration, which has already imposed sanctions on Syria's oil industry and a state-owned bank, froze the U.S. assets of Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem and two other Syrian officials on Tuesday.
Hama has seen some of the biggest protests against 41 years of Assad family rule and was the first city assaulted during Ramadan. Authorities said the army withdrew by mid-August, but residents reported a significant military presence on Wednesday.
"Several light tanks and dozens of buses parked at al-Hadid bridge at the eastern entrance of Hama. Hundreds of troops then went on foot into al-Qusour and Hamidiya neighborhoods. The sound of gunfire is being heard," Abdelrahman, a local activist, told Reuters by phone.
"These neighborhoods have been among the most active in staging protests," he added.
Another resident said Toyota pick-up trucks mounted with machineguns and buses full of troops also assembled overnight near al-Dahiriya district at the northern entrance of Hama, 205 km (130 miles) north of the capital Damascus.
"The people want the execution of the president," a YouTube video showed dozens of protesters chanting in Hamidiya after night prayers, shortly before the raid on the district.
Most foreign media were expelled from Syria after the uprising began in March, making it hard to verify reports.
Hama was scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, sent by Assad's father Hafez al-Assad to crush an Islamist uprising.
Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, has repeatedly said force is necessary to defeat what he calls a foreign plot to divide Syria, which is majority Sunni Muslim. Authorities blame armed groups for the violence and say more than 500 soldiers and police have been killed.
Activists from Syria's Kurdish minority will hold a conference in Sweden on September 3 to unify efforts against Assad, organizers said.
Massoud Akko, a Kurdish writer who lives in Norway, criticized major parties representing the Kurds, who number an estimated one million out of Syria's 20 million population.
"Kurdish politicians cannot keep issuing timid statements about the need for reform and stopping the repression as our Arab brethren keep getting massacred," he said.
Most Kurdish party chiefs say they do not want a repetition of a 2004 Kurdish revolt that Assad's forces crushed.
RAMADAN TOLL
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in Britain, said on Wednesday that 360 civilians had been killed during Ramadan and 113 members of the army and security forces.
State television aired an audio recording on Tuesday of what it said were two terrorists who revealed "a full agenda of provocation and targeting police and army camps and terrorizing peaceful citizens in the name of freedom and non-violence."
In the northwestern province of Idlib on the border with Turkey, troops shot dead one villager, Hazem al-Shihadi, at a checkpoint overnight near the town of Kfaruma where army defections have increased, activists said.
Around 7,000 Syrian refugees, most of whom had fled army assaults on their towns and villages in Idlib, are housed in six camps across the border in Turkey, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network said in a statement.
Syrian authorities have said that most of refugees who fled to Turkey, which put their number in excess of 10,000, had returned to their homes in Idlib after troops "cleansed" a main town in the province of "armed terrorist groups."
Residents and activists have reported a rising number of defections among Syrian armed forces, which are drawn mostly from the Sunni majority, but are dominated by Alawite officers effectively under the command of Assad's younger brother Maher.
They say most of the defectors have fled to Turkey or taken refuge in their home towns and villages, provoking raids by pro-Assad forces, and in some instances, armed clashes.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans)
Showing posts with label Hama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hama. Show all posts
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Tragedy echoes in children’s screams on Hama’s empty streets
12 August 2011
ÜNAL AYDIN, HAMA
Source: Today's Zaman
The central Syrian city of Hama, which was stormed by the army at the start of the month in an assault that killed more than 100 people, according to activists and rights groups, has turned into a ghost town in the literal sense.
Almost all houses in the city, which was once home to 700,000 people, seemed abandoned, while the residents who remained in the city locked themselves into their houses, leaving the streets entirely empty.
The siege of Hama, also the scene of a 1982 massacre, began on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Troops sent in by Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, overran the city and crushed Islamist insurgents, killing many thousands of people.
On Thursday afternoon, 10 journalists from Turkey arrived in Hama to follow the recent situation in this Syrian city. The journalists left for Syria following a statement that the Syrian army had withdrawn tanks and heavy weapons.
Allowing journalists to visit Hama for the first time since the military offensive began was one of the recommendations Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu conveyed to President Assad on Tuesday. Giving similar permission to journalists to visit the city of Deir al-Zor was another piece of advice from Davutoğlu to Assad, and Ankara will look at whether this advice will be heeded in the coming days, Turkish officials told Today’s Zaman on Thursday. The Turkish journalists were escorted around Hama, as the government tried to show that the military presence has been reduced.
There were no tanks or armed units on the streets of Hama. Yet, apparently because of being terrorized by the appearance of buildings that were hit by Syrian forces earlier during a crackdown in which activists said scores of people were killed, residents prefer to stay in their homes, fearing that they may again be targets of these forces.
Having said that, most residents assume military forces are still in the city. Nobody could blame them for such an assumption as there were dozens of soldiers stationed in Assi Square in Hama, which had been the main converging point for hundreds of thousands of protesters in recent weeks. While soldiers have been patrolling the empty streets of the city, the armed units and tanks that withdrew from the city were waiting at certain points just outside the city.
Their presence close to the city was evidence that they are ready to enter the city again to put down any uprising if that fire is lit again.
The small number of civilians on the streets pretended as if they had witnessed no crackdown and as if no tanks had entered the city. After speaking with them for a while, one understands that these are from pro-Assad groups who were assigned to explain to foreigners coming into the city that “everything is all right.”
Some other civilians, apparently terrorized by the soldiers’ presence, said they were not in the city when the operations were launched.
On one side the presence of soldiers, on the other side propaganda by pro-Assad civilians almost enabled the journalists from fully and freely touching the reality on the ground. However, the screams in the eyes of children who were trying to drag the journalists by their arms in order to show them traces of the crackdown were the only real voices that the journalists heard.
The children’s insistence on their effort also indicated that this fire of uprising will not end in the near future. The only thing that could not be controlled by the soldiers were children who especially wanted to show the Hamidia Mosque, which was hit by rockets during a nightly Ramadan prayer, or “tarawih,” which follows the breaking of the fast.
The soldiers could not prevent the children from reaching the journalists since they apparently hesitated to take any action against children in front of foreign journalists.
As some children openly said, “They attacked from aircraft and via rocket-launchers,” some others dared to shout slogans saying “Let the Assad regime be destroyed.”
One of them was masked, and only his eyes were visible.
“For 50 years we have had the same administration in this country,” he said.
“You see us, we have no weapons, but they are attacking us with tanks and planes. And I tell President Assad that even though it will be difficult, we will remove you from power,” he said.
During the short period of time when Turkish journalists were in the city, children in a way became the voice of this silent and oppressed city.
ÜNAL AYDIN, HAMA
Source: Today's Zaman
The central Syrian city of Hama, which was stormed by the army at the start of the month in an assault that killed more than 100 people, according to activists and rights groups, has turned into a ghost town in the literal sense.
Almost all houses in the city, which was once home to 700,000 people, seemed abandoned, while the residents who remained in the city locked themselves into their houses, leaving the streets entirely empty.
The siege of Hama, also the scene of a 1982 massacre, began on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Troops sent in by Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, overran the city and crushed Islamist insurgents, killing many thousands of people.
On Thursday afternoon, 10 journalists from Turkey arrived in Hama to follow the recent situation in this Syrian city. The journalists left for Syria following a statement that the Syrian army had withdrawn tanks and heavy weapons.
Allowing journalists to visit Hama for the first time since the military offensive began was one of the recommendations Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu conveyed to President Assad on Tuesday. Giving similar permission to journalists to visit the city of Deir al-Zor was another piece of advice from Davutoğlu to Assad, and Ankara will look at whether this advice will be heeded in the coming days, Turkish officials told Today’s Zaman on Thursday. The Turkish journalists were escorted around Hama, as the government tried to show that the military presence has been reduced.
There were no tanks or armed units on the streets of Hama. Yet, apparently because of being terrorized by the appearance of buildings that were hit by Syrian forces earlier during a crackdown in which activists said scores of people were killed, residents prefer to stay in their homes, fearing that they may again be targets of these forces.
Having said that, most residents assume military forces are still in the city. Nobody could blame them for such an assumption as there were dozens of soldiers stationed in Assi Square in Hama, which had been the main converging point for hundreds of thousands of protesters in recent weeks. While soldiers have been patrolling the empty streets of the city, the armed units and tanks that withdrew from the city were waiting at certain points just outside the city.
Their presence close to the city was evidence that they are ready to enter the city again to put down any uprising if that fire is lit again.
The small number of civilians on the streets pretended as if they had witnessed no crackdown and as if no tanks had entered the city. After speaking with them for a while, one understands that these are from pro-Assad groups who were assigned to explain to foreigners coming into the city that “everything is all right.”
Some other civilians, apparently terrorized by the soldiers’ presence, said they were not in the city when the operations were launched.
On one side the presence of soldiers, on the other side propaganda by pro-Assad civilians almost enabled the journalists from fully and freely touching the reality on the ground. However, the screams in the eyes of children who were trying to drag the journalists by their arms in order to show them traces of the crackdown were the only real voices that the journalists heard.
The children’s insistence on their effort also indicated that this fire of uprising will not end in the near future. The only thing that could not be controlled by the soldiers were children who especially wanted to show the Hamidia Mosque, which was hit by rockets during a nightly Ramadan prayer, or “tarawih,” which follows the breaking of the fast.
The soldiers could not prevent the children from reaching the journalists since they apparently hesitated to take any action against children in front of foreign journalists.
As some children openly said, “They attacked from aircraft and via rocket-launchers,” some others dared to shout slogans saying “Let the Assad regime be destroyed.”
One of them was masked, and only his eyes were visible.
“For 50 years we have had the same administration in this country,” he said.
“You see us, we have no weapons, but they are attacking us with tanks and planes. And I tell President Assad that even though it will be difficult, we will remove you from power,” he said.
During the short period of time when Turkish journalists were in the city, children in a way became the voice of this silent and oppressed city.
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