AMMAN – Syrian troops raided houses in a Sunni district of the besieged port of Latakia yesterday, residents said, arresting hundreds of people and taking them to a stadium after a four-day tank assault to crush protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad forces attacked al-Raml al-Filistini (Palestinian sand), named after a refugee camp built in the 1950s, at the weekend, as part of a campaign to crush a five-month uprising which has intensified in actions against major urban centres of protest since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on August 1st.
Latakia is of particular significance to Dr Assad, who is of Syria’s minority Alawite community. The 45-year-old president, a self-declared champion of the Palestinian cause, comes from a village to the southeast, where his father is buried. The Assad family, along with friends, controls the city’s port and its finances.
“Shelling and the sound of tank machine guns subdued today. They are bussing hundreds to the Sports City from al-Raml. People who are picked up randomly from elsewhere in Latakia are also being taken there,” said a resident, referring to a complex used for the 1980s Mediterranean Games.
“Tanks are continuing to deploy, they are now in the main Thawra street,” said the resident, a university student who did not want to be identified.
A diplomat in the Syrian capital said: “The reports about detention conditions and torture are increasingly alarming. Assad is backing himself more into a corner by using more and more violence and turning more Syrians against him.”
Turkey’s prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, compared the situation in Syria with that in Libya, where rebels have been fighting forces loyal to Muammar Gadafy since February. “We have done our best on Libya, but haven’t been able to generate any results. So it’s an international issue now. Gadafy could not meet our expectations, and the outcome was obvious,” Mr Erdogan told reporters.
“Now the same situation is going on in Syria. I’ve sent my foreign minister, and personally got in touch many times – the last of them three days ago on the phone. In spite of all this, civilians are still getting killed.”
Citing witnesses in Latakia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a force of around 700 security personnel fanned across al-Raml, with houses being demolished in the neighbourhood “on the pretext they lacked construction permits”.
A Palestinian official described the military offensive in Latakia as “a crime against humanity”, adding to Arab and international outrage at Assad’s crackdown on popular protests calling for an end to his autocratic rule. – (Reuters)