Syria to lift emergency rule, but tensions remain high

Syrian troops on Sunday entered the northern city of Latakia, where snipers killed four people. Tensions remain high, despite reform pledges by the government, and a decision to lift emergency rule, which has been in place since 1963. 

Reuters

"The army entered Latakia... to put an end to the destruction and the murders," the pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported.

Al-Watan said two security services officers were killed on Saturday and 70 troops wounded in Latakia, 350 kilometres north-west of the capital Damascus.

A high-ranking Syrian official said snipers had shot and killed two passers-by Saturday in the scenic port, one of Syria's most developed areas.

Earlier, Syria freed more than 260 political detainees, mostly Islamists, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights.

The news did little to placate protestors, who returned to the streets despite a deadly crackdown.

There were reports of protesters in the southern Syrian town of Tafas burning an office of the ruling Baath party.

The protesters had gathered for the burial of three demonstrators who had been shot dead by security forces in rallies on Friday.

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Interview: Karim Bitar, Paris-based thinktank IRIS

Paul Nolan

Tafas is 18 kilometres north of the city of Daraa, a tribal area near the border with Jordan that has emerged as the symbol of Syria's protest movement.

Rights group Amnesty International say 55 people have been killed in the past week in Daraa.

Karim Bitar at the Paris-based thinktank IRIS told RFI the Syrian people do not want to lose stability, or for their country to become “another Iraq”.

“Nevertheless they want radical reforms to be enacted today rather than tomorrow,” Bitar said.

“People in Syria remember that in 1982 there was an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama and this uprising was crushed at the cost of more than 20 000 victims according to human rights associations.

“In the past decades the regime was extremely brutal in its repressions. Today it is obviously more complicated with YouTube, Facebook, with all the media channels.

“It is not easy to conduct a mass massacre.”