DAMASCUS, April 25, (Agencies): Thousands of Syrian troops backed by tanks stormed the flashpoint town of Daraa on Monday killing at least 25 people, witnesses said, as a leading rights activist accused Damascus of opting for a “military solution” to crush dissent.
Troops also launched assaults on the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Al-Maadamiyeh, witnesses said, as the head of the UN human rights agency slammed what she called the security forces’ disregard for human life.
The United States, which has repeatedly denounced Syria’s repression of the protests, was considering sanctions against Damascus, an official in Washington said.
Amman said Syria on Monday closed its border with Jordan in a statement quickly denied by Syrian customs chief Mustapha Bukai.
Activist Abdullah Abazid told AFP by telephone from Daraa that Syrian forces were pounding the southern town near the border with heavy artillery and that “at least 25 martyrs have fallen.”
“There are still bodies sprawled in the streets,” he said, with the sound of loud explosions and gunfire in the background.
A group of activists said in a statement to media that “more than 25 people fell but no one could reach them because of the heavy shelling” and that only seven bodies were retrieved.
They were identified by name and included a father and his two sons, said the statement which accused Syrian troops of firing indiscriminately with anti-aircraft guns.
“The commander of the Third Army Corps, Kamal Ayyash, a citizen of Daraa, was arrested because he protested against the killings,” the statement said.
A resident earlier said he witnessed five people killed when their car was raked with fire in Daraa, where Syria’s unprecedented anti-regime protests erupted six weeks ago.
Abazid said Daraa was “like being in a battlefield.”
The army seized at least two mosques in the town as well as the cemetery where scores of people killed in anti-regime protests have been buried, activists said.
The assault began at dawn when 3,000 to 5,000 army and security forces swooped down on Daraa, with tanks taking up position in the town centre and snipers deploying on rooftops, activists said.
“The minarets of the mosques are appealing for help. The security forces are entering houses. There is a curfew and they fire on those who leave their homes. They even shot at water tanks on roofs to deprive people of water,” said a witness.
A massive crackdown was also under way in Douma, a large suburb in northern Damascus, and nearby Al-Maadamiyeh, said activists reached by telephone.
“The situation is dramatic. Patrols man each alleyway and prevent people from going out even to buy bread,” one resident reached by AFP said.
“Even funerals of youths killed on Friday and Saturday were not held,” he added. Schools stayed closed and civil servants were unable to go to work.
An activist from Douma said security forces “surrounded a mosque and are firing indiscriminately. Streets are cut off from each other and Douma is isolated from the outside world.”
There have been sweeping arrests in Douma since Sunday, he added.
Some 390 people have been killed in security crackdowns since the protests erupted, rights activists and witnesses say.
The latest bloodshed came despite President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday signing decrees ending a draconian state of emergency, imposed by the Baath party when it seized power in 1963.
He also abolished the state security court that has tried scores of regime opponents outside the normal judicial system and issued a decree “to regulate” peaceful demonstrations.
A day later, tens of thousands of people swarmed cities and towns to test the government’s sincerity, but scores were killed by security forces, activists and rights groups have said.
The head of the UN human rights agency on Monday demanded an immediate halt to the killings in Syria, slamming the security forces’ disregard for human life.
“The Government has an international legal obligation to protect peaceful demonstrators and the right to peaceful protest,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement.
“The first step now is to immediately halt the use of violence,” she said, calling for am end to the use of live ammunition by security forces against peaceful protestors.
Pillay’s call came as thousands of Syrian troops backed by tanks on Monday launched assaults on the flashpoint towns of Daraa and Douma, firing indiscriminately and leaving bodies in the streets, witnesses said.
Pillay called the Syrian government’s response to the demonstrations erratic.
“Just a few days after the announcement of sweeping and important reforms, we are seeing such disregard for human life by Syrian security forces,” she said.
Pillay noted that the president had instructed security forces not to resort to violence against demonstrators but the excessive use of force has only intensified in recent days.
“The violence and ongoing repression of activists, however, indicates that either the Government is not serious about those reforms or it is unable to control its own security forces,” said the UN human rights chief.
“I strongly urge President Al-Assad and his Government to rapidly implement promised reforms to restore the people’s confidence,” she said.
Pillay said her office had received a list naming 76 people who were killed on Friday during evidently peaceful marches, but that the number may be considerably higher, and that her staff was looking into the reported killing of at least 13 others in funeral processions on Saturday.
Libya
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was unhurt in a NATO airstrike on his Bab al-Aziziyah compound early on Monday that left three people dead, a government spokesman said, calling it an assassination attempt.
Spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said it appeared to have been an attempt on Gaddafi’s life, but those who died were office workers and security guards while 45 people were wounded. He said the building housed political offices.
“How is this act of terrorism protecting civilians in Libya?” he said to visiting journalists at the compound, where books spilled from an office into twisted metal and crumbled concrete. “This is a cowardly attempt to pursue one person.”
He said Gaddafi was not in hiding, but was in a safe place.
“He is well, he is healthy, he is in high spirits,” Ibrahim said.
Libyan state television showed pictures of Gaddafi meeting people in a tent. It said the pictures had been taken on Monday.
NATO bombs wrecked Gaddafi’s office in his immense Tripoli residence on Monday, while rebels in besieged Misrata said they had pushed loyalist forces out of the city.
Heavy explosions shook central Tripoli shortly after midnight as warplanes roared over the city.
A Libyan official accompanying journalists shortly afterwards at Gaddafi’s compound said 45 people were wounded, 15 seriously, in the bombing. He said he did not know whether more victims were under the rubble.
“It was an attempt to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi,” he affirmed.
Seif al-Islam, Gaddafi’s son, called the bombing “cowardly.”
“This cowardly attack on Muammar Gaddafi’s office may frighten or terrorise children but we will not abandon the battle and we are not afraid,” he said, claiming that NATO’s battle was “lost in advance.”
NATO aircraft also targeted the Bab Al-Aziziya district, where the presidential compound is located, late on Friday.
At around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) on Sunday, smoke was still rising from part of the building that was hit, watched by dozens of people shouting pro-Gaddafi slogans.
A meeting room facing Gaddafi’s office was badly damaged by the blast.
NATO in Brussels said warplanes had targeted a communications centre.
“NATO carried out a precision strike in central Tripoli last night,” a statement said. “The target was a Communications Headquarter that was used to coordinate attacks against civilians.”
In Misrata, 215 kms (132 miles) east of Tripoli, rebels made significant gains Sunday in a key street in the besieged city, where residents have lived under a rain of shells and sniper fire for 50 days.
Several rebel sources said regime forces had been pushed out of Misrata, but rockets continue to hit Libya’s third city.
“Clashes took place on the western outskirts, but the rest has been cleaned up. There may be some soldiers hiding in the city, afraid of being killed, but there are no groups of soldiers left,” one said.
Misrata had again been rocked overnight by the crash of incoming rockets and incessant gunfire, despite a pledge by the Libyan regime to halt the fighting.
By Monday morning the streets were mostly deserted, with many residents holed up inside buildings marked with the scars of weeks of battle, blasted by artillery and pockmarked by bullets.
The only sound was the voice of the muezzin from a local mosque, who chanted repeatedly “God is greatest, He is my only guide.”
Throughout a terrifying night, as salvos of Grad rockets and bursts of automatic weapons echoed across the city, the muezzin continued his refrain.
“He chanted for hours to calm people,” said Seilam Naas, 55, a resident of the Kharuba district and one of a few locals to venture out.
In the Mujamaa Tibi hospital, Mohamed al-Fajieh recounted the results of the night’s fighting, describing unusually severe wounds and corpses reduced to little more than ashes.
There were “completely charred corpses, some of them so badly burned that we aren’t sure they are human bodies,” he told AFP. “This is the first time we’ve seen such burns.
“The injured described much stronger explosions than usual, we have wounds created by the force of the blast, which shows that the explosion was enormous.”
According to figures provided by sources at hospitals across Misrata, around a dozen people were killed and at least 20 wounded overnight.
The Austrian foreign ministry is trying to help negotiate with Libyan the release of a South African photo-journalist missing for three weeks, a ministry spokesman said Monday.
Following a “number of exchanges” between the Austrian and Libyan authorities, Vienna was in a position to say that Anton Hammerl, 41, was alive and well, spokesman Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal told the Austrian news agency APA.
Nevertheless, it was too early to say when he might be released.
Egypt
Egypt’s state prosecutor on Sunday ordered ex-president Hosni Mubarak’s transfer to a military hospital after a medical exam showed his health was stable enough for the move.
The move would be temporary until preparations are completed at a Cairo prison hospital for the former strongman, who is under detention in a Red Sea resort hospital on suspicion of involvement in the deaths of protesters.
The military hospital was not specified but security sources have said it was likely to be the International Medical Centre on the outskirts of Cairo.
Prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmud’s office said a medical team he sent to the Sharm el-Sheikh hospital determined that Mubarak was “in stable condition with medical treatment.”
Mahmud “tasked the interior minister to expedite preparations in the hospital” of Tora prison, where Mubarak’s two sons and a growing number of ex-regime officials have been detained, it said in a statement.
The hospital would need intensive care facilities to deal with any sudden deterioration of the 82-year-old’s heart condition, it said, adding the preparations could take one month.
When Mubarak was first remanded earlier this month, the prosecutor asked the interior minister to prepare for his transfer to the prison hospital but was told it was not equipped to handle an intensive care case.
Around 500 diehard supporters of Egypt’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak protested on Monday in Cairo city centre against any attempt by the authorities to prosecute him.
The demonstration came a day after the state prosecutor ordered Mubarak, who is under detention at a Red Sea resort hospital on suspicion of involvement in the deaths of protesters, transferred to a military hospital.
“We love you, president,” chanted protesters gathered outside the state television building, waving placards that read: “No to a Mubarak trial.”
“I don’t want the president to be put on trial. We forgive him, we love him,” one woman said.
Mubarak quit on February 11 after 18 days of massive popular protests against his 30-year autocratic rule.
Putting him on trial was a key demand of tens of thousands of protesters who staged mass demonstrations in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square.
An official commission set up to investigate deaths during the protests said in a summary of its report released last week that 846 civilians and 26 policemen had died in the revolt. Most were shot in the head and chest.
Mubarak himself was complicit in the killings, according to the secretary general of the commission, who told reporters the president must have been consulted before the use of live fire against protesters was approved.
“Why think only of the bad things he did and not remember the good? We owe him a lot of good things,” a young man in the crowd said of the 82-year-old former president.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s premier suspended a Christian governor linked to the ousted Mubarak regime after his appointment sparked protests in restive Qena province, state news agency MENA reported on Monday.
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf ordered Emad Mikhail suspended for three months in a bid to contain anger in Qena, a region of central Egypt with a history of sectarian clashes, MENA said.
Mikhail is to be replaced temporarily by his deputy, Magued Abdel Karim, the agency said, adding that the premier called for calm in Qena and a return to business as usual.
Thousands of angry protesters, both Muslims and Christian Copts, have rallied in Qena over the past 12 days against the appointment of Mikhail — a senior police officer under the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Bahrain
Bahrain is seeking death penalty for a group of protesters accused of killing two policemen during anti-government demonstrations in the Gulf island kingdom, state media reported on Monday.
The government has stamped the demonstrations in a security crackdown since February when mainly Shiite protesters took to the streets demanding more say in the Sunni-ruled country’s affairs.
Security forces have arrested hundreds of people since then and a number of them died while in official custody. Hundreds of mostly Shi’ite workers have been sacked from government jobs and state-linked companies, rights and opposition groups say.
On Sunday, Bahrain News Agency (BNA) said the military prosecutor would seek the death sentence for seven men accused of killing the policemen at the Lower National Safety Court.
It quoted the prosecutor as saying the men had “committed their crime for terrorist reasons”. It gave no other details of the incident.
BNA added the defendants pleaded not guilty and that the case would be heard again on April 28.
At least 13 protesters and four police were killed during the clashes.
A hospital source told Reuters last month that at least two of the four policemen killed had been run over by cars on March 16. The government says it has only targeted those who committed crimes during the protests.
The state banned protests when it imposed martial law in March and invited troops from Sunni-led Gulf neighbours to help quash the unrest.
The state news agency said three more men also were charged with attempting to kill policemen in separate court cases.
Yemen
Yemeni security forces shot dead three more protesters against President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday while opposition politicians debated whether to cooperate with a Gulf plan for the veteran autocrat to step aside.
The risk of Yemen, the poorest Arab state long on the brink of collapse, descending further into bloodshed is a major worry for Saudi Arabia and the United States, which fear an active al-Qaeda wing could strengthen a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula.
Witnesses said security men opened fire to stop protesters marching through the city of Taiz, south of the capital. They were trying to join a pro-democracy rally that would take them past a palace belonging to Saleh. “There were thousands in a march who came from outside Taiz, but the police, army and gunmen in civilian clothes confronted them, opening fire with bullets and tear gas,” said Jamil Abdullah, a protest organiser.
“They opened fire heavily from every direction.”
A woman watching the clash from her balcony was shot dead, and medical sources said 25 others were shot and wounded in the town, scene of some of Yemen’s largest anti-Saleh protests.
Both Western and Gulf Arab allies of Yemen have tried to mediate a solution to a three-month crisis in which protesters inspired by Arab revolts against autocratic rule in Egypt and Tunisia have sought Saleh’s immediate ouster.
Saleh, seeing political allies desert him en masse, agreed in principle to a proposal by Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers to step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself, his family and aides.
But the plan, yet to be formally agreed, would allow Saleh to stay in power for a further 30 days before stepping down. Analysts say that could leave room to make trouble.
In Taiz, clashes lasted for several hours, with heavy gunfire reported. Dozens were arrested, activists said.
Similar clashes broke out in the town of Ibb, where one protester was shot dead and a dozen were wounded by live fire as police tried to break up a march, witnesses said.
Security forces also shot dead a protester in the southern province of al-Baida while trying to disperse a protest.
Yemen’s main opposition coalition, made up of Islamists and leftists, has welcomed the Gulf plan but stopped short of a full endorsement and said it would stay out of a unity government during a transition period.