Protesters gather during a demonstration in the Syrian port city of Banias, April 26, 2011. Syrian demonstrators in Banias chanted '' people want the overthrow of the regime '' on Tuesday as troops deployed around the small town for a possible attack, said a rights campaigner reportedly stands in contact with Banias.
Credit: Reuters/HandoutBy Khaled Yacoub OweisAMMAN | Di april 26, 2011 8: 48 pm EDT
AMMAN (Reuters)-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poured troops in a suburb of the capital at night while his tanks pounded Deraa to crush resistance in the southern city where the rebellion against his autocratic reign began on 18 March.
White buses brought in hundreds of soldiers in full combat gear in the northern suburb of Damascus from Douma, a witness told Reuters on Wednesday, from where the pro-democracy protesters have tried to marching in centre of the capital in the last two weeks but were met with bullets.
More than 2000 security police deployed in Douma on Tuesday, manning checkpoints and checking of identity cards to arrest pro-democracy supporters, said the witness, a former soldier who did not want to be identified.
He said he saw several trucks in the streets equipped with heavy machine guns and members of the secret police carrying rifles patrol. He believed that the soldiers and Republican Guard, one of the most loyal to Assad units.
Diplomats said Assad sent the fourth mechanized Division, under the command of his brother, Maher, in Deraa on Monday where demonstrations demanding political freedom and an end to corruption more than a month ago broke out.
Syria is ruled by the family since Bashar Assad the father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, took power in a coup d ' état of 1970. The younger Assad kept intact the autocratic political system he inherited in 2000, while the family extended its control over the struggling economy of the country.
Assad has strengthened ties with Syria Shi'ite Iran, both countries back the Hizbollah and Hamas militant groups, while Damascus still seeks peace with Israel. Syria and Israel are technically at war but the Golan border between them is since a 1974 Armistice peaceful.
VICTIMS MOUNT
The 45-year-old president had dismissed suggestions that the tide of Arab Syria, could reach revolutions to pro-democratic protests broke out in Deraa on 18 March.
Assad the attempts to appease the dissatisfaction through the lifting of emergency law while the draconian powers of the secret police and the ruling Baath party's monopoly on power are not the protests stopped.
But Assad, a member of Syria's Alawite minority, still retains support, especially among co-religionists who dominate the army and the secret police and preferential treatment could lose as majority Sunni Syria was to turn it into a democracy.
Has an alliance between the ruling minority with the Sunni merchant class, forged by the elder Assad through a mix of coercion and the granting of privileges, still, Rob demonstrators financial support and a foothold in the historical bazaars of Damascus and Syria in the second largest city Aleppo.
Demonstrators demand, however have hardened in calling for the overthrow Assad, with demonstrators rebuked the President for forces to shoot at his own people to send in place of the Golan Heights liberating.
"People want the overthrow of the regime," chanted demonstrators in Banias on Tuesday as security forces deployed in the hills around the city in preparation for a possible attack similar to Deraa, according to a protest leader.
Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said security forces have at least 35 civilians were killed because they Deraa at dawn on Monday entered.
The Organization, founded by captured human rights lawyer Mohannad al-Hassani, said electricity, water and telecommunications remained cut in Deraa and tanks kept firing at residential buildings, with supplies blood to hospitals start to run low.
At least 400 civilians have been killed by security forces in their campaign to crush the protests, Sawasiah said, adding that the Security Council of the United Nations must invest to start proceedings against Syrian officials in the International Criminal Court and "rein in the security apparatus."
"These savage behaviour, which is aimed at keeping the ruling clique in power at the expense of an increasing number of civilian life, insists on the immediate international action after convictions," Sawasiah said in a statement to Reuters.
"The murderers in the Syrian regime must be held accountable. The rivers of blood spilled by this oppressive regime for the last four decades are enough, "said the statement.
International criticism of Assad's response to the protests was initially muted but after the death of 100 protesters on Friday and Assad made the decision to storm Deraa, which his father 1982 repression of Islamists in Hama echoed escalated.
European Governments called upon Syria to end the violence. Washington said it was more targeted sanctions against Syria, studying while Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Uri Rosenthal suggested the European Union to suspend aid to Damascus and impose an arms embargo and sanctions against its leaders.
(Edit by Jon Hemming)
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