SECURITY FORCES have stepped up military operations in three Syrian towns in an attempt to crush a seven-week-old popular protest movement that has shaken the Baathist regime to its core.
Troops and police yesterday stormed residential areas in the industrial city of Homs, where a 12-year-old boy was killed, according to human rights activists in touch with people there.
Government forces rounded up suspected rebels in Baniyas, an oil refinery port on the Mediterranean coast, where a military operation was launched on Saturday.
More than 100 people were reported to have since been arrested in the town with six killed, including four women who activists say were shot while demonstrating for the release of family members detained by security forces. Tanks were also reported to have entered Tafas – a town near Deraa, the city which has seen the largest protests and which has been under military siege since April 25th.
According to Abdul Halim Zoubi, a journalist on the Jordanian side of the border near Deraa, security forces surrounded Tafas in the early hours of yesterday and have since been making arrests.
Another man on the Jordanian side of the border, who did not want to give his name, said he had spoken to someone from Tafas who told him: “The security men have been arresting all men under the age of 40. They have also surrounded Tafas from all corners and it is now under siege.”
The operations appeared to mimic the techniques used in the siege of Deraa, with electricity and phone lines immediately cut off.
“It’s exactly as they did in Deraa in Baniyas and Homs – collective punishment of a whole city,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a human rights advocate and scholar at George Washington University.
The authorities said the protests were driven by armed terrorist groups, citing the deaths of security officers as evidence that the uprising was not a peaceful one.
It was unclear whether their strategy of using brutal force will succeed in restoring calm to Syria.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)