Syrian tanks kill protesters in Hama
Syrian troops' assault on opposition stronghold appears to be part of nationwide offensive ahead of start of Ramadan
A screengrab taken from al-Arabiya shows an armoured vehicle on a street of an unspecified Syrian city. A tank assault on Hama is said to have killed scores of people. Photograph: EPA
Scores of people have been shot dead and there were reports of bodies lying in the streets of the opposition stronghold of Hama following a tank assault as Syrian troops unleashed an apparent nationwide offensive targeting protesters against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Videos posted online showed columns of black smoke rising from Hama after tanks moved in at dawn, with witnesses reporting indiscriminate firing at citizens. Residents shouted "God is great!" and threw firebombs and stones at the tanks as they pushed through the city.
Assad's forces also opened fire in the eastern cities of Deir Ezzor and Al Boukamal and the southern town of Hirak.
"The tanks came into the city around 5.30am from four different directions," a Hama resident said by telephone, as gunfire was heard in the background. "They ran over some of the makeshift checkpoints and there is gun and tank fire," he said.
The death toll continues to rise, with activists saying at least 40 people may have been killed in Hama alone. Bodies were reported to be piling up in hospitals, where doctors were calling for blood donations.
The foreign secretary, William Hague, condemned the assault.
"I am appalled by the reports that the Syrian security forces have stormed Hama with tanks and other heavy weapons this morning killing dozens of people, he said.
"Such action against civilians who have been protesting peacefully in large numbers in the city for a number of weeks has no justification."
Those confirmed dead include Khaled al-Hamed who, activists from the Local Coordination Committees said, was shot and then run over by one of the tanks while attempting to flee from his neighbourhood.
In what appears to be a coordinated nationwide assault on the eve of Ramadan, the military moved into Deir Ezzor and Al Boukamal on Saturday, according to activists and residents, with reports of a further 10 people shot dead there on Sunday.
Four people were killed after forces entered the southern town of Hirak, close to the southern city of Deraa where protests first broke out en masse, the Local Coordination Committees said. More than 200 people were also arrested in Moadimiyeh, close to Damascus, in dawn raids.
Activists say they believe the regime is trying to scare people off the streets before Ramadan, when protests are expected to intensify after daily evening prayers.
"It's a massacre. They want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan," a witness who identified himself by his first name, Ahmed, told The Associated Press by telephone from Hama. He said he had seen up to 12 people shot dead in the streets in a district known as the Baath neighbourhood. Most had been shot in the chest and head, he said.
A doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters that the city's Badr, al-Horani and Hikmeh hospitals had received 24 bodies.
"There are bodies uncollected in the streets," said another resident, adding that army snipers had positioned themselves on the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison.
Tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around northern Hama, residents said.
The now notorious government official Reem Haddad, who has provoked comparisons with Iraq's Comical Ali for insisting on absurd explanations for the brutal government responses to protests, told al-Jazeera that forces had entered Hama because people could not go about their daily life. "It's as if it belongs to another planet," she said.
Human rights groups say 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests since mid-March and thousands have been detained.
But the bloodshed has only served to rally more people to the streets, while the regime has focused on consolidating its support base. After offers of dialogue and reforms accompanied by raids, killings and arrests failed to kowtow protesters, the regime appears to have decided to escalate its use of brute force.
"The attack [on Hama] appears to be part of a coordinated effort across a number of towns in Syria to deter the Syrian people from protesting in advance of Ramadan, Hague said. "President Bashar is mistaken if he believes that oppression and military force will end the crisis in his country. He should stop this assault on his own people now."
Hama has become the epicentre of demonstrations with thousands taking to central al-Aasi square after government forces moved out of the city following the shooting dead of more than 70 people on 3 June. While protesters have controlled the streets, government forces have surrounded the city since the start of July and conducted overnight raids.
Before the assault on Hama, electricity and water supplies had been cut, activists said, in a tactic regularly used by the regime before entering towns.
Analysts say the regime had been holding off from attacking Hama because of its historical sensitivity. In 1982, at least 10,000 people were killed in the Sunni city of 800,000 when the army put down an armed Islamist revolt against the rule of Assad's late father, Hafez.
Earlier this month the US and French ambassadors made a visit to the city to show solidarity with the protesters, while the Turkish prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, has said there must not be "another Hama" in reference to 1982 massacre.
There were also reports this weekend of a Syrian army colonel saying he had founded an army of defectors after fleeing with hundreds of soldiers. The man, identifying himself as Colonel Riad al-Asaad, told AFP: "I am the commander of the Syrian Free Army" and warned against any attack on Deir Ezzor.
Amateur footage circulating online also purported to show soldiers defecting in Hama, including one video showing soldiers kissing protesters.
Nour Ali is the pseudonym of a journalist in Damascus
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