Syria Live Blog - May 13

Syria Live Blog - May 13

Thousands continue to take to the streets across Syria, despite reform pledges by President Bashar al-Assad. Activists say hundreds have been killed by security forces. We bring you the latest news from various sources.

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All times given are local (GMT+3)

• Timestamp: 

  7:39pm

  In the coastal cities of Lattakia and Baniyas, small protests in neighbourhoods cut off from one another by security and the military tried to congregate together, but were beaten back.

  Live fire was used in Lattakia, according to two eyewitness accounts, with several injured and fatalities feared, according to Insan, a Syrian human rights group.

  In Baniyas, which is under a military lockdown, a small protest was dispersed by secret police, with another wave of arrests including the imam of a local mosque and a 78-year-old man, according to reporting gathered by Insan.

• Timestamp: 

  6:22pm

  In Dumayr, a small town 30km east of Damascus, Al Jazeera has learned that several hundred protestors braved a massive police presence to call for an end to the siege on neighbouring Duma, which the military has kept ringed by checkpoints and cut off from Damascus and surrounding areas for over three weeks. 

• Timestamp: 

  5:41pm

  The following video is of protesters in Berze, chanting in support of local residents in Deraa.
  
  
  
   

• Timestamp: 

  5:33pm

  Several hundred protestors in Berze, a suburb north-east of Damascus, chanted for their neighbours to join them in protest against the government, evidently frustrated that more people had not turned out onto the streets. 
  
  “Shame on you, standing along the pavement!” they chanted, “For you just coming to watch, it’s better to walk back home!”
  
  “Two hours before prayer security men, soldiers and riot police were waiting here to finish any demonstration,” a local resident told Al Jazeera.
  
  “Some young people tried to demonstrate but they couldn’t organise a big one. Two or three hundred demonstrated in Berze’s old suburb, but the number of security men was more than us.” 
• Timestamp: 

  5:09pm

  Thousands of security personnel have successfully crushed a protest in Midan, a Sunni neighbourhood of Damascus which two weeks ago saw the largest anti-government protests in the capital since the unrest began.
  
  A witness who has protested in Midan over the past several weeks described to Al Jazeera how a combination of riot police, secret police and paid thugs have been used to swamp Midan and the surrounding area, making protest there all but impossible.
  
  “Around the mosque I must have seen about 3,000 different security men. On the checkpoints they carry guns, but most carry sticks. The journey is usually ten minutes, but today it took an hour and a half. There were also dozens of buses full of armed security," the witness said.
  
  The witness added that worshippers, who last month poured onto the streets calling for toppling the regime after their imam denounced the killing of protestors, this week appeared frightened.
  
  “This week people were very scared for some reason, more frightened than before. Even the imam of the mosque gave a very general speech. You couldn’t say he was with or against the government.
  
  From the speech and their tactics I think it is obvious the regime have got control over Midan. It is no longer going to be a central place for protests. They’ve learned how to surround and contain it.

  
  There were 3,000 people ready to arrest us. That’s more than we fit inside the mosque. It was impossible to stand against them.”
• Timestamp: 

  4:28pm

  Two eyewitnesses in Homs confirmed to Al Jazeera that secret police opened fire on a crowd of some 2,000 protestors as they attempted to march into a central neighbourhood.

  The first eyewitness said he joined protestors from the Grand Mosque who gathered in the Bab Dreib and Bab Hud areas.
  
  He added the protestors were surrounded by plain clothes secret police and watched over by snipers hidden on roof tops.

  As they began to march down a street toward the central Bab Sebah neighbourhood the secret police opened fire on the crowd. The army, which has tanks and troops deployed in and around the city, was not involved in the attack, which left one confirmed injured, said the eyewitness.

  A second eyewitness who spoke to Insan, a Syrian human rights group, confirmed shooting had taken place around Bab Sebah.

• Timestamp: 

  3:08pm

  An activist tells Al Jazeera that about 50 people have been arrested when leaving the al-Hassan mosque in the Damascus district Midan, a protest flashpoint for several Fridays. 

• Timestamp: 

  3:04pm

  Syrian families fearing fresh violence during protests after Friday prayers have fled into the area of Wadi
  Khaled in northern Lebanon, a local official tells AFP.

  "Around 50 Syrian families from Homs, Tall Kalakh and Bab Sabaa entered Wadi Khaled via the illegal Naura crossing," Fayez Abdullah, mayor of the village of Amayer in Wadi Khaled, said.

  Hundreds of Syrians have entered Wadi Khaled on foot from villages near the border since last week, bringing with them mattresses and other basic provisions.

• Timestamp: 

  2:53pm

  Protesters in Homs chant "Bashar is the biggest thief" and other slogans against President Assad.

• Timestamp: 

  2:50pm

  A rights activist tells AFP news agency that security forces have fired warning shots to disperse thousands of demonstrators in Deraa.

  "The security forces fired machineguns into the air in the town of Deraa in order to disperse thousands of protesters who had gathered after prayers," the activist said.

• Timestamp: 

  2:45pm

  People in this video chant "The people want to topple the regime" in the town of Marat al-Numan, 40km north of Hama.

• Timestamp: 

  2:20pm

  A document which Al Jazeera cannot verify the authenticity of, addressed to Damascus’ Attorney General, appears to confirm the mass arrests of males, including children, from Deraa and the direct link between the security services and the Syrian judiciary.

  Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies and a visiting scholar at George Washington University, told Al Jazeera he obtained the document directly from the Attorney General’s office in Damascus.

  The paper, dated May 8, comes from the head of Political Security and includes the official stamp of the interior ministry. The document lists the names of 27 detainees, aged between 54 and 15 years old, who have been imprisoned for "organising demonstrations, chanting slogans and banners depicting the symbols of the nation."

  "This shows lifting emergency laws has meant nothing. Syria was supposed to return to its Constitution where peaceful demonstrations are allowed," Ziadeh said. "This shows the mentality that is still in place." 

  The majority of those on the list are family members sharing the same last name, while five of the 27 are children under 18 years old.

  Under the terms of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Syria ratified in June 1993, under 18 should not be jailed with adults nor put at risk of torture, which Human Rights Watch has said is "rampant" in Syrian prisons. 

  

   

• Timestamp: 

  2:13pm

  Another video said to be from today, from Amouda in the northeast:

• Timestamp: 

  2:01pm

  This video was just posted from Qamishli. Protesters chanting "In blood and soul we sacrifice for you Deraa" and "The Syrian people are one".

• Timestamp: 

  1:55pm

   

  Thousands of Kurds and Arabs are protesting across the Kurdish-majority northeast of Syria, according to eye witnesses speaking to Al Jazeera.

  Demonstrators chanting "Syria for all its sons," "Long live independent, free Syria," and  "Syrian people are one," have taken to streets in Qamishli, Amouda, Ras al-Ain, and Derbassieh in Hassake governorate, while hundreds have also turned out in Ain al-Arab, on the eastern edge of Aleppo governorate. 

  Organisers estimated 3,500 people, mainly Kurds, protested in Amouda and up to 4,000 marched in Qamishli, including Arabs and members of Syria’s Christian Assyrian sect. 

  Debate has been raging among Syria's Kurdish leaders over how much to rally their communities behind the protest movement.

  "The Kurds are now expanding their participation in demonstrations calling for freedom in the country, along with other fellow Syrians. The army's intervention is condemned," Ismail Hami, Secretary General of the Kurdish Yakiti Party, told Al Jazeera. 

  "This national army is only there to protect the borders and not to open fire on citizens."

  A Kurdish political activist in Ain al-Arab said: "The president should order the army to go back to barracks and he should release the thousands of prisoners captured recently and end the siege on the cities. Then we might have better circumstance for dialogue."

   

• Timestamp: 

  1:43pm

  Activist Suhair Atassi says 3,000 people are protesting in Qamishli, a mainly Kurdish city in the northeast, and there are reports of protests in nearby towns including Amuda.

• Timestamp: 

  1:41pm

  Demonstration reported in Hama, with protesters demanding freedom and lifting of the siege of Deraa and Baniyas.

• Timestamp: 

  1:00pm

  Activists in Syria say authorities are taking measures to try to stop anti-government protests after Friday prayers at the country's mosques. They say security forces closed off areas and set up checkpoints after calls for protests throughout the country, the AP reports.

• Timestamp: 

  12:48pm

  The UN's human rights office says it is "extremely concerned'' about the situation in Syria. Spokesman Rupert Colville says his office is poised to send a high-level fact finding team to the country as soon as it receives government permission, the Associated Press reports.

• Timestamp: 

  12:43pm

  Rupert Colville, a spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Syria's death toll of 700-to-850 - based on information provided by human rights activists - was "quite likely to be genuine," Reuters reports.

• Timestamp: 

  11:40am

  Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, spoke about Syria on a visit to Kazakhstan. He warned against the repeat of a 'Libya scenario' in the country. Russian news agencies quoted him saying:

  We are very worried that the process of reconciliation, the process of the start of dialogue ... is being slowed down by a desire of some participants to attract foreign forces to support their actions.

  The betting is that outside players will appreciate the problem and will not only discuss but also subsequently repeat the Libyan situation, for example, interfere using methods of force among other things.

  It is a great pity that the Libyan situation has created a huge temptation for many opposition members in that region to create a similar situation and expect that the West will not stand aside but will be interfering in the conflict in favour of one of the sides.

• Timestamp: 

  11:20am

  The following video, posted on Youtube, claims to be footage of a protest in Homs on Thursday evening. Demonstrators there marched from the city's Omar Mosque.

  
  

• Timestamp: 

  11:05am

  President Bashar al-Assad has ordered Syrian troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators, a rights campaigner told the Reuters news agency. Read the full story on our website here.

• Timestamp: 

  10:09am

  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned against foreign intervention in Syria, calling on its opposition not to seek a repeat of the "Libya scenario", the AFP news agency reports.

• Timestamp: 

  7:07am

  Russia is attempting to suppress a United Nations report that says Iran has been breaking a UN arms embargo by shipping weapons to Syria, Western diplomats told Reuters on Thursday.

  The confidential report, obtained by Reuters, said most of Iran's breaches of the embargo have been deliveries of weapons to Syria.

  Russia is able to block the Iran report because decisions about such reports are made by consensus among the 15 members of the Security Council.

• Timestamp: 

  5:30am

  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ordered troops not to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators ahead of Friday prayers that have become a rallying point for protesters in an eight-week uprising, a rights campaigner said.

  Louay Hussein said Assad's adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told him in a phone call on Thursday that "definitive presidential orders have been issued not to shoot demonstrators and whoever violates this bears full responsibility".

  In a statement sent to Reuters Hussein said:

  I hope we will see (no firing at demonstrators) tomorrow. I still call for non-violent form of any protest regardless of the response of the security apparatus.

• Timestamp: 

  3:30am

  Australia is ramping up sanctions against Syria in protest against the regime's violent suppression of demonstrators.
  
  Kevin Rudd, the Australian foreign minister, said on Friday his government is ramping up targeted financial sanctions initiated in April against key regime figures responsible for human rights abuses and is also imposing an embargo on arms and other equipment used for internal repression.

• Timestamp: 

  2:10am

  

  Clinton, in Greenland for talks about Arctic cooperation, repeated US denunciations of the crackdown, which she said has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people since March [GALLO/GETTY]

• Timestamp: 

  1:30am

  In some of her strongest remarks yet on Syria, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said on Thursday that the brutal crackdown against protesters demonstrated the government's weakness, though she stopped short of saying President Bashar al-Assad must quit.

  Clinton said:

  They engage in unlawful detention, torture and the denial of medical care to wounded persons. There may be some who think that this is a sign of strength. But treating one's own people in this way is in fact a sign of remarkable weakness.

• Timestamp: 

  12:09am:

  US embassy in Damascus issued a statement on Thursday calling the Syrian government to allow peaceful protests.
  
  The embassy in its statement said:

  The United States Embassy witnessed, on the evening of May 12, the third peaceful demonstration this week of protesters who disagree with American policy towards Syria.  The United States respects the right of these demonstrators to express themselves in peaceful marches.
  
  The U.S. Embassy regrets that the Syrian Government has denied the rights of thousands of other Syrians to demonstrate peacefully to criticize Syrian policy.  Most recently, on the evening of May 11, Syrian security forces, using clubs and batons, brutally assaulted a group of Aleppo university students who sought to march peacefully to demand an end to Syrian security operations targeting some Syrian cities.
  
  The United States believes there should be no double standard.  The Syrian Government should grant all Syrians the right to express themselves peacefully, as required of it by its signature on the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.