Syria sees Friday protest growing against government
Image via WikipediaProtests spread across Syria Friday, challenging the rule of the Assad family after their forces killed dozens of demonstrators in the south.There is much more.
In the southern city of Deraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled since his death in 2000.
Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.
In Hama, in the center of the country, where the elder Assad put down an Islamist revolt in 1982 at a cost of many thousands of lives, residents said people streamed through the streets after weekly prayers chanting "Freedom is ringing out!" -- a slogan heard in uprisings sweeping the rest of the Arab world.
The same chant had earlier marked funeral processions in Deraa for some of the at least 37 people killed Wednesday, when security agents attacked pro-democracy groups at a mosque. In all, 44 deaths have been reported in the past week in Deraa.
Security men, on alert across the country during weekly prayers at mosques, quickly stifled a small demonstration in the capital Damascus. They hauled away dozens among a crowd of some 200 who chanted their support for people of Deraa.
In Tel, near Damascus, about 1,000 people rallied and chanted slogans calling relatives of Assad "thieves."
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Syria is having trouble containing the uprising that began with the arrest of kids writing graffiti and has become much more deadly at least in Daraa. While the crowds are large in Daraa, they are not in Damascus where the government is located. The Syrians will probably have to have large crowds in Damascus for the uprising to reach critical mass.
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