Geo World

Syrian forces kill 10 people

DAMASCUS: Security forces on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and made sweeping arrests, activists said, as Western and Arab countries sought a special UN session on Syria's crackdown on dissent. President Bashar al-Assad, meanwhile, met with the central committee of the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, for the first time since protests erupted in mid-March against his regime, the state-run SANA news agency reported. A defiant Assad told the committee that Syria "will remain strong and resilient" despite international pressure, adding that he had promised reforms not because of outside pressure but "because Syrians were convinced of their necessity." A key demand of the opposition movement has been the removal of Article 8 of the constitution which stipulates that the Baath party is the sole "leader of state and society." But in defiance of growing international condemnation, hundreds of Syrian security services raided homes in the Mediterranean port city of Latakia on Wednesday, activists said. The Britain-based-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 700 members of the security services took part in operations in the city's southern district of Ramel, arresting people on lists. An activist in the city said that security forces used live fire Wednesday to disperse some 2,000 protesters outside the city's Al-Hussein mosque, but did not report any immediate casualties. In the central city of Homs, nine people, including two people gunned down outside a mosque in the city's Wa'ar district and a civilian shot dead by a sniper in the city's Armenian neighbourhood, were killed by security forces, activists in the city said. (AFP)