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| A grab from YouTube purportedly shows people in Idlib on Friday holding a banner reading "We only kneel before God" |
US
President Barack Obama on Saturday demanded Damascus "immediately"
halt its crackdown on protesters, as activists said Syrian troops killed at
least three people in raids on Latakia and other towns.
Obama and
Saudi King Abdullah in a telephone call expressed their "shared, deep
concerns about the Syrian government's use of violence against its
citizens," the White House said.
"They
agreed that the Syrian regime's brutal campaign of violence against the Syrian
people must end immediately."
In a
separate phone call, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron also agreed
on the need for an "immediate" end to the bloodshed.
They
reiterated "their deep concern about the Syrian government's use of
violence against civilians and their belief that the Syrian people's legitimate
demands for a transition to democracy should be met."
The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said two people were killed and 15 wounded, four
of them critically, during a military operation in the southern Latakia area of
Ramleh, a nerve centre of anti-regime protests.
It said
military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, converged on
Ramleh, sparking an exodus of residents.
Security
forces raided the city's Asaliba district, arresting "more than 70
people" in a door-to-door crackdown, it said, adding that women who
resisted the arrest of their children were harassed and beaten.
An activist
in the Homs region of central Syria said troops backed by two tanks also
entered the village of Jussiyeh which borders Lebanon, triggering a stampede
across the frontier and to neighbouring areas.
Military
vehicles, meanwhile, swooped on the town of Qusayr, likewise in Homs province,
where security and intelligence services carried out arrests and killed one
person, the Observatory said.
In Huleh,
another town in Homs province, families received the corpses of four relatives
who had been arrested in the past few days, the Observatory said.
Security
forces backed by tanks have been trying to crush dissent city by city and town
by town since pro-democracy protests erupted in mid-March.
The
Observatory says 2,150 people have been confirmed dead since then -- 1,744
civilians and 406 members of the security forces.
Activists
said at least 20 people were killed on Friday when security forces opened fire
on thousands of anti-regime protesters who rallied in flashpoint cities after
Muslim weekly prayers, updating earlier tolls.
State
television, meanwhile, said "two security agents were shot dead by armed
men in Douma," a suburb of the capital.
Organisation
of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu on Saturday urged
"the Syrian leadership to exercise utmost restraint through immediate
cessation of the use of force to suppress people's demonstrations."
Ihsanoglu
"expressed the readiness of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to
play a role in this regard, as he believes that dialogue is the only secure
option through which this devastating crisis could be contained."
Canada also
bolstered sanctions, freezing the assets of more senior officials, and
companies linked to the Damascus regime.
The UN
Security Council is to hold a special meeting next Thursday to discuss human
rights and the humanitarian emergency in Syria, diplomats at the United Nations
said.
In a
Twitter statement, France's UN mission said UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi
Pillay and UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos were to
brief the meeting.
As the West
grapples with ways to pressure Damascus into ending the bloodshed, US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton has urged countries to stop trading with Syria.
"We
urge those countries still buying Syrian oil and gas, those countries still
sending Assad weapons... to get on the right side of history," Clinton
told reporters.
France on
Saturday followed the example of the United States in advising its citizens in
Syria to leave the country.
AFP
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