Syrians march, calling for ouster of President Assad

Associated Press

BEIRUT

Defying government guns, thousands of Syrian protesters poured down city streets and a main highway Friday to press demands for President Bashar Assad’s ouster. Security forces opened fire, killing at least 15 people, including two children, activists said.

“Our revolution is strong! Assad has lost legitimacy!” a YouTube video showed protesters chanting in Zabadani, a suburb of Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Syria’s streets have become the stage for a test of endurance between a 3-month-old pro-democracy movement, bloodied but resilient, and an iron-fisted but embattled regime. The latest round of protests and killings came as international pressure mounted on Assad.

“We will not stand by while the Syrian regime uses violent repression to silence its own people,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said after the European Union expanded sanctions — asset freezes and travel bans — to more members of the Syrian leadership.

The Syrian opposition says 1,400 people have been killed as the government has cracked down on a movement demanding an end to four decades of Assad family rule — a popular uprising renewed each Friday after weekly Muslim prayers.

Five people were killed by security forces’ gunfire this Friday in Barzeh, a Damascus district 3 miles from the city center, said the Local Coordination Committees, which track the protests. But Syrian state television offered another version, saying gunmen, otherwise unidentified, had opened fire on security personnel and civilians, killing three civilians and wounding several security force members.

Five other fatalities occurred in al-Kasweh, a suburb of the capital; four in the central city of Homs, and one in Hama, also in central Syria, said the Local Coordination Committees (LCC).