AMMAN (Reuters) ? Syrian troops killed at least 38 people in a tank assault on the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Sunday, activists said, despite a direct U.N. appeal to President Bashar al-Assad to stop using military force against civilians.
The assault on Deir al-Zor, capital of an oil-producing province, began one week after Assad sent the army to seize control of Hama, focal point of nearly five months of protest against his autocratic rule.
In a separate tank-led attack on villages in the Houla plain north of the central city of Homs, security forces killed at least 13 people, activists said.
"The numbers of casualties are escalating by the hour," activist Suhair al-Atassi, a member of the Syrian Revolution Coordinating Committee, said by telephone from Damascus.
The Arab League, in a rare response to the escalating bloodshed in Syria, joined the international wave of criticism on Sunday, calling on authorities to stop acts of violence against protesters, the Qatar News Agency reported.
Assad defended the army campaign against what Damascus says is an armed insurrection. "Dealing with outlaws and convicts who stage highway robbery and seal off cities and terrorize the population is a national duty," state news agency SANA quoted him as telling Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour.
Syria has barred most independent media since the start of the uprising against Assad, making it hard to verify accounts from residents, activists and authorities.
An Assad adviser said neighboring Turkey, which condemned the attack on Hama as an atrocity, should not meddle in Syrian affairs and warned Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu he would get a frosty reception when he visits Damascus on Tuesday.
UNDER HEAVY GUNFIRE
"Early this morning columns of army tanks and bulldozers, under cover of heavy rounds of gunfire, stormed into the western and northern entrances of the city and dismantled barricades set up by residents," a Deir al-Zor resident said.
"A dozen tanks are taking position in the main square in Jubaila market in the northern sector of Deir al-Zor," the resident, who gave his name as Abu Bakr, said by telephone.
Cairo-based activist Ammar Qurabi said 42 people were killed in Deir al-Zor and 17 in Houla. Another 28 were killed overnight, he said, including eight in the northern province of Idlib after protests at evening prayers. The Syrian Revolution coordinating union said 50 people were killed in Deir al-Zor.
The military assault on Deir al-Zor, about 400 km (250 miles) north-east of Damascus, was launched a day after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Assad he was alarmed by the escalating violence and demanded he rein in the army.
Ban "urged the president to stop the use of military force against civilians immediately," the U.N.'s media office said.
Residents of Deir al-Zor, situated on the Euphrates river in a province bordering Iraq's Sunni heartland, had been bracing for an assault on their city. An Internet video last week showed a tribal meeting discussing preparations for armed resistance to any military attack.
In the past, authorities allowed local tribes to arm as a counterweight to a Kurdish population further northeast.
But ties between Assad's minority Alawite rule and the Sunni Muslim province deteriorated after years of water shortages. The crisis, which experts blame on mismanagement and corruption, decimated agriculture and led to the internal displacement of up to a million people.
Together with Hama, Deir al-Zor became the center of the largest demonstrations against Assad family rule.
Deir al-Zor resident Abu Bakr, from the Jubaila area which has seen some of the largest anti-Assad demonstrations in recent weeks, said mosque loudspeakers were blaring "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) on Sunday.
Another resident said tanks and armored personnel carriers had deployed in the center of town. "Shells are now hitting al-Joura district," he said, the sound of machinegun and tank fire echoing in the background. "No one dares go out in the street near the main square."
TURKISH MESSAGE
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who forged close ties with Assad but has been sharply critical of the crackdown, said his foreign minister, Davutoglu, would visit Damascus on Tuesday. "Our message will be decisively delivered," he said.
Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban hit back on Sunday, criticizing Ankara for failing to condemn "the savage murders of civilians and military men by armed terrorist groups."
"If...Davutoglu is coming to Syria to deliver a decisive message, then he will hear even more decisive words in relation to Turkey's position," Shaaban said.
An official source also criticized a statement by Gulf Arab states who broke months of silence on Saturday to express concern about over the violence in Syria. The source, quoted by SANA, said the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council had ignored the "killing and sabotage carried out by armed groups."
Syrian authorities say gunmen have killed 500 police and soldiers since March. Reinforcing the message that Syria faces an armed revolt backed by outside forces, state television broadcast footage on Sunday of 250 shotguns, explosives and ammunition it said were seized at the border with Lebanon.
SANA also quoted an official source saying army units uncovered on Saturday a massacre committed against police officers in Hama and found 13 mutilated bodies thrown into the Orontes River near the city.
Rights groups say Syrian security forces have killed at least 1,600 civilians since the start of the protests, inspired by Arab uprisings which overthrew leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.
In Hama, tanks and armored vehicles deployed throughout the city on Saturday, a resident said, after a week-long assault which activists say killed at least 130 people. One group put the toll at more than 300 civilians.
Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, crushed an armed Islamist uprising in Hama nearly 30 years ago, killing many thousands of people and razing parts of the city's old quarter.
Hama stands as a symbol of defiance to the Assad family due to the 1982 uprising and because, until Bashar al-Assad sent in the tanks to crush the latest protests, it was the scene of some of the biggest demonstrations against his rule, with more than 100,000 gathering on Fridays demanding he go.
(Writing and additional reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alistair Lyon and Louise Ireland)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110807/wl_nm/us_syria
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