At least four killed as thousands defy Syria’s Assad

DAMASCUS: Security forces opened fire on protesters in Douma near Damascus killing at least four people and wounding dozens, a witness said, as thousands of Syrians staged demonstrations after Friday prayers.

The death toll could be more than 10, said the witness but he only provided AFP four names for those killed, Ibrahim Mubayed, Ahmad Rajab, Fuad Ballah and Mohammed Alaya.Worshippers emerged from Friday weekly Muslim prayers at the main mosque in Douma, 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the Syrian capital, and began pelting security forces with stones.The security forces fired back, killing at least four people, the witness said. A Syrian official was unable to confirm the report.In Daraa, one of the main focal points of rising dissent, witnesses told AFP that thousands of faithful gathered outside the flashpoint southern town’s courthouse after leaving a mosque.“Death rather than humiliation,” and “National Unity,” they shouted.Chants were also directed against President Bashar al-Assad, whose highly anticipated speech to parliament on Wednesday failed to match the demands of pro-reform protests that erupted more than two weeks ago.Protests also took place for the first time in the mainly Kurdish populated northeast, a Kurdish rights activist said.“Hundreds of people marched peacefully through the streets after Friday prayers in Qamishli and Amuda chanting ‘We want freedom’ and ‘God, Syria and freedom’,” rights activist Radif Mustafa told AFP.The “Friday of Martyrs” protests were also held from the coastal city of Latakia to Homs and Darriya, near the capital Damascus, where people chanted:“My beloved Syria, give me my freedom.”The official SANA news agency confirmed demonstrations took place without incident near mosques in Daraa and Latakia, where protesters paid tribute to martyrs and called for speedier reforms.In Damascus, hundreds of protesters locked themselves up inside Al-Rifai mosque in the city centre chanting “Freedom, freedom,” as security forces tried to break in, a demonstrator said, and a group of pro-regime loyalists gathered in the square opposite.In Banias, 280 kilometres (175 miles) northwest of Damascus, about 1,000 people demonstrated without incident.A petition signed by 18 Muslim clerics said the sheikhs “back the people’s demands for reforms, liberty, the lifting of emergency law and the right to protest.”A little further north, in the confessionally divided city of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, around 200 people staged a protest without incident in the Sleibi suburb.On Wednesday police intervened in Sleibi, killing four or five people, a rights activist said. The pro-Islamic London-based Syrian Committee for Human Rights put the toll at 25.It was the third week in succession for protests following Friday Muslim prayers.President Assad, who is facing domestic pressure unprecedented in his 11-year rule, failed to lift almost 50 years of emergency rule in his first address to the nation since the protests demanding greater freedoms broke out on March 15.Instead, he said there was a “conspiracy” targeting unity in Syria, blaming the country’s “enemies” for taking advantage of the needs of the people to incite division in the country ruled by emergency law since the Baath party seized power in 1963