Syrian security forces kill at least 22 in Hama crackdown

Nicosia: Syrian troops killed at least 22 people in a crackdown they launched in the flashpoint central city of Hama on Tuesday, a human rights group said.

"At least 22 people were killed in Hama and more than 80 wounded, some of them seriously," Ammar Qurabi of the National Organisation for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

"The wounded are being treated in two hospitals in Hama," he added in a statement.

Earlier it was reported that Syrian security forces had killed 14 people Tuesday in the flashpoint central town of Hama which had been surrounded by the army, rights activists said.

Two brothers

The attacks focused on two districts north of the Orontes River, which splits the city of 650,000 people in half. Residents said the dead included two brothers, Baha and Khalid Al Nahar, who were killed at a roundabout.

Troops raided towns to the northwest of Hama near the border with Turkey in Idlib province, and authorities intensified a campaign of arrests that has resulted in the detention of at least 500 people across Syria in the last few days, rights campaigners said.

Tuesday's raid by security forces and gunmen loyal to Assad followed the killings of at least three people when troops and security police entered Hama at dawn on Monday.

France

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said the world could not stand by "inactive and powerless" in the face of the violence.

"We are hoping that the Security Council adopt a clear and firm position and we call on all the members of the Security Council to take responsibility in light of this dramatic situation with a Syrian population subjected day after day to an unacceptable, ferocious and implacable armed repression."

French MP Gerard Bapt, head of the French-Syrian Friendship Committee, told Reuters: "With the Arab League not moving and with a nation like Saudi Arabia saying nothing publicly to condemn the killings by the Syrian regime it is difficult to see international pressure rising beyond the economic."

Chinese, Russian resistance

France, unlike its European partners and the United States, says Assad has lost legitimacy to rule. But a French campaign for UN condemnation of the crackdown has met stiff Russian and Chinese resistance.

France's foreign minister Alain Juppe, who held talks in Moscow last week, said on Tuesday there were signs Russia was beginning to question its Syrian stance.

He said he attempted to sway his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but that Russia was still threatening to use a veto against the resolution.

The US State Department said Syria's actions belied Assad's promises to launch a national political dialogue.

Earlier, Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said: "Ten people have been killed — nine by gunfire from security forces and one murdered and then thrown into the river Orontes — and more than 35 others wounded".

The previous day, six civilians, including a 12-year-old child were killed and more than 70 injured, according to activists in the besieged city.

A source from the Hama Revolution Coordination Committee said it had called on residents to donate blood and take part in blocking roads leading to residential districts in the city with a population of 800,000.

Possible arrests

Sixty tanks and scores of armoured vehicles surrounded the city from its eastern, western and southern gates leaving the northern gate secured by a military checkpoint.

"Security forces have a long list of names of people to arrest from Hama. We will not surrender," Ali Al Hamwi, a member of the local coordination committee told Gulf News.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International said in a report released yesterday that "crimes against humanity" were committed by Syrian forces against the residents of the western town of Tal Kalakh.

"The accounts we have heard from witnesses to events in Tal Kalakh paint a deeply disturbing picture of systematic, targeted abuses to crush dissent," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said.

- With inputs from agencies