More than 10,000 people occupied a central square in the Syrian city of Homs on Monday, after funeral processions for some of the 14 people reported killed a day earlier ignited renewed protests, according to witnesses and activists.
“The people are in charge in the city center now,” Rassem al-Atassy, a human rights activist, said by telephone from Homs. Another activist there, Najati al-Tayara, told Al Hurra television network that “the people are gathered there until the end.”
Initially, the mourners offered traditional prayers for the dead in the town’s central New Clocktower Square, but then began clapping and chanting against President Bashar al-Assad. Funeral marchers lofted coffins overhead.
Security forces fired in the air in the afternoon, witnesses said by telephone, but the crowds refused to disperse.
Tension mounted in the city after violent nighttime clashes on Sunday capped a day of widening demonstrations across Syria despite the president’s latest effort to mollify protesters over the weekend.
Renewed demonstrations on Sunday and Monday were a brazen dismissal of the steps outlined by the president in a televised address Saturday, notably the lifting of the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency before the end of this week. The protests have posed an unprecedented challenge to the rule of Mr. Assad, who has clearly been shaken by the upheavals that have felled longstanding governments in Tunisia and Egypt and are threatening those in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.
The worst of the violence on Sunday appeared to be in Homs and the nearby town of Talbesa.
Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, said as many as 20 people might have died in Homs. Security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters with live ammunition and tear gas, said another witness reached by phone. State media reported that a “group of armed criminals” fired from rooftops, killing an army officer, Brigadier General Abdou al-Tilawi, and two of his children, the youngest 15 years old.
In Talbesa, two died when security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition on a funeral procession, sending the town into chaos and leaving at least 15 wounded, said a witness and Ms. Zeitouneh. Security forces reportedly arrested a number of severely wounded protesters from the town’s main hospital, she added, raising fears that at least 12 listed in critical condition could die. State news media, reflecting the official version of events, said one policeman was killed and 11 were wounded by rooftop snipers from a “group of armed criminals.”
Ms. Zeitouneh also said she had received reports from the coastal town of Latakia, that security forces had opened fire Sunday night on protesters there as well. The number of casualties was not immediately known. Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group, said that five died in Latakia. “The injured in Homs are being treated in homes and hidden,” said Mr. Tarif. “Many need hospitalization but the fear of kidnapping makes them take the risk of death in their family homes.”
Human rights activists said on Monday that security forces in both Homs and Latakia were arresting injured protesters from inside local hospitals, leading a doctor in Homs to fear that as many as a dozen patients in critical condition may have died in detention. In both cities many injured protesters were receiving treatment in homes, hiding from both security forces and hospitals.
The Syrian protests coincided with new disclosures that in 2005 the United States began to secretly finance some Syrian opposition groups intent on toppling Mr. Assad. The disclosures, in diplomatic cables obtained byWikiLeaks, showed State Department funding for Barada TV, an anti-Assad satellite broadcaster run by Syrian exiles in London, as well as concern by American diplomats in Syria that Syrian intelligence agents began to suspect the American financing two years ago.
It was unclear whether the secret financing has since ended, but an April 2009 cable said a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative was to have distributed $12 million to an array of Syrian projects by September 2010. The existence of the cables was first reported Sunday night on The Washington Post’s Web site.
A September 2009 cable reported on a Syrian crackdown against groups and individuals that had received American funding.
“Over the past six months, SARG security agents have increasingly questioned civil society and human rights activists about U.S. programming in Syria and the region,” said the cable, using an acronym for Syrian Arab Republic government. It said some news media figures had been interrogated about funding and that an imprisoned human rights lawyer, Muhanad al-Hasani, faced new charges of illegally receiving United States government funding.
“It is unclear to what extent SARG intelligence services understand how U.S.G. money enters Syria and through which proxy organizations,” the cable said, using initials for the United States government. “What is clear, however, is that security agents are increasingly focused on this issue when they interrogate human rights and civil society activists.”
American funding for political training and other pro-democracy initiatives has been the longtime subject of complaints from several Arab governments in the past, notably including that of Hosni Mubarak, the ousted Egyptian president.
Mr. Assad has sought to suppress outside reporting on the protests in Syria, while his response to the protests themselves has oscillated between dry proposals for reform and deadly violence, and on Sunday it appeared violence was the choice. Clashes between security forces and protesters left at least five dead and dozens injured on the holiday, meant to celebrate the removal of the last French troops from Syria in 1946.
Rights groups estimate that more than 200 people have died in the unrest, which began in mid-March.
On Monday in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, a protest of several hundred broke out in the late afternoon as men and women took to the streets chanting for the overthrow of the government, said an eyewitness.
The protests on Sunday reflected not only a rejection of Mr. Assad’s reforms, which also included a pledge to tackle unemployment and corruption and a law to permit political parties, but a desire to move beyond a political life dominated by the Assad family since 1963.
“Everyone is shouting against Bashar personally,” said Ms. Zeitouneh, the activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link. Among those singled out are Maher al-Assad, a brother who commands the security forces, and Rami Makhlouf, Mr. Assad’s first cousin and a business tycoon widely seen as Syria’s most powerful economic figure.
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