Up to 850 Syrians may have been killed in a two-month military crackdown and thousands of demonstrators have been arrested, the United Nations human rights office said today.
The government says about 100 troops and police have been killed during the protests, the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s11-year authoritarian rule.
"We again call on the government to exercise restraint, to cease use of force and mass arrests to silence opponents," Rupert Colville, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news briefing in Geneva.
Syria has blamed most of the violence on 'terrorist groups' backed by Islamists and foreign agitators. But a rights campaigner, speaking ahead of Friday prayers that have become a rallying point for protesters, said the president has ordered troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Thousands of people have converged on a square in the Syrian city of Hama for a pro-democracy demonstration today.
"I am moving among a huge crowd... They are coming from every direction," said a witness in Hama where the military crushed an Islamist-led uprising in 1982.
A Kurdish opposition figure also reported large protests in Syria's Kurdish eastern regions. Small demonstrations are being held in the Damascus district of Barzeh and in the suburb of Saqba.
Mr Colville said a high-level UN human rights mission was preparing to go to Syria, as well as neighbouring countries, but had not yet received a reply from Damascus,.
"We hope to be ready to deploy as soon as we are granted access," he said. "We have many reports of use of snipers, use of tanks in a number of towns. The government is reporting that soldiers and police have been killed, that is why we want to get in there and see for ourselves.”
Foreign journalists have been barred from the country, making independent accounts difficult to obtain.