DAMASCUS, March 26 (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad faced the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power today, with one city in the grip of anti-government protesters and unrest spreading to other parts of Syria.
Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials have said, and there were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday, during demonstrations that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in this most tightly controlled of Arab countries.
There were also protests in the capital Damascus and in Hama, a northern city where in 1982 the forces of Assad's father killed thousands of people and razed much of the old quarter to put down an armed uprising by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
Government officials accused armed opponents of taking part in demonstrations and they justified the use of force.
Access for journalists was restricted, although a Reuters reporter in Deraa said tens of thousands of people who marched on Friday during funerals for demonstrators killed earlier in the week appeared largely to be unarmed.
Inspired by successful uprisings against authoritarian rule in Egypt and Tunisia, the mourners chanted for “Freedom”. The International Crisis Group think-tank said the 45-year-old, British-educated Assad could call on reserves of goodwill among the population to steer away from confrontation and introduce political and economic reforms.
“Syria is at what is rapidly becoming a defining moment for its leadership,” the think-tank wrote on Friday. “There are only two options. One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change.
“The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end.”
|
E-mail
