Dubai: Syrian security forces killed at least 28 protesters on Friday as hundreds of thousands flooded the streets nationwide in the largest anti-government demonstrations since the uprising began more than four months ago.
For the first time, more than a million people took to the streets of just two Syrian cities yesterday to protest against President Bashar Al Assad.
"More than a million people demonstrated today in Hama and Deir Al Zour," Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted as saying. "It's a major development and a message to the authorities that protests are getting bigger."
The protests stretched from Damascus and its suburbs to Hasakeh and Idlib provinces in the north, Daraa in the south and Latakia on the coast. Thousands converged on the flashpoint cities of Homs and Hama in central Syria, among other areas across the nation of 22 million.
Roadmap
"All hell broke loose, the firing was intense," an activist in Daraa was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that Al Assad "has lost his legitimacy in the eyes of his people" because of the brutal crackdown.
In tandem with Friday's protests. Organisers called for a simultaneous "Conference of National Salvation" to be held today in Damascus and Istanbul to look at ways to oust Al Assad.
A statement said the conference will be held simultaneously in both cities "to draw up a roadmap that will bring the country out of despotism towards democracy and define the mechanism to overthrow the regime [as] sought by the [people of the] Syrian street."
In an interview published on Thursday, US Ambassador Robert Ford warned Al Assad and his regime that "the street will wash them away" unless they adopt reforms at "the speed demanded by the street protesters."
