DAMASCUS, July 30, (Agencies): Syrian security forces killed at least 20 people and wounded 35 others on Friday as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned out for anti-regime protests, activists said.
The deaths were reported on Saturday by two Syrian human rights organisations, one of them also saying that hundreds of people were arrested by security forces in Damascus.
“Nineteen martyrs fell on Friday,” the National Organisation for Human Rights said in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.
“The Syrian authorities had decided to go ahead and kill protesters during the day marked by demonstrations dubbed ‘Your silence is killing us’,” it said.
The toll included one person killed in Damascus and seven in the region around the capital, including five in Kiswah and two in Douma, said Ammar Qorabi, who heads the human rights group.

Another three were killed in the flashpoint southern town of Daraa, three more died in the eastern city Deir Ezzor, two others in the nearby town of Bukamal, and one in the western coastal city of Latakia.
One person was killed in a village in the central governorate of Homs and another in the flashpoint city of Hama, also in central Syria, said Qorabi, adding that he had a list of names for those killed Friday.
For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 12 civilians were killed and 35 were wounded on Friday — including 11 whose names figured on the list provided by Qorabi’s group.
The 12th victim, a young man, was shot dead in Qadam, a Damascus neighbourhood, the Britain-based Observatory said.
“Soldiers and a large number of security agents entered Qadam at 3:00 am on Friday (0000 GMT) and cordoned off the area,” said the head of the group, Rami Abdel Rahman.
“More than 500 people were arrested during the operation, and one young man was killed at a security roadblock,” he said.
Abdel Rahman said the authorities also banned public funerals in the district, and said the young man was quickly buried in the presence of security officials to forestall any demonstrations.
“The army put up barricades at all entrances to the area, and heavily armed members of the security forces carried out searches and made arrests,” he said, adding they had lists of names of people hostile to the regime.

“Security forces broke down doors when they weren’t opened quickly enough, and then they posted people on the roofs of houses during the four-hour operation,” he said.
The security forces were deployed en masse across the country for another day of protest after the Muslim weekly Friday prayers against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Friday’s protests, called for by Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011, were aimed at putting pressure on the rest of the world to act in the face of the deadly crackdown on dissent by Assad’s government.
“Where are you, defenders of freedom?” and “Enough of your silence ... silence is a shot in our chests,” activists said on the website, a driving force behind the protest movement.
Activists said that hundreds of thousands swarmed the streets across Syrian on Friday, with half a million marching in the flashpoint city of Hama.
Since the protest movement emerged in March, 1,888 people have been killed, 1,519 of them civilians and 369 members of the security forces, according to the Observatory.
In addition, more than 12,000 people have been arrested and thousands more have fled, according to non-governmental groups.

Libya
Libyan rebels say the gunmen who shot dead their military chief were fighters allied in their struggle to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, raising questions over divisions and lawlessness within rebel ranks.
The assassination of Abdel Fattah Younes, apparently by his own side, has hurt the opposition just as it was winning broader international recognition and launching an offensive against Gaddafi’s forces in the west of the country.
After 24 hours of confusion, rebel minister Ali Tarhouni said Younes had been killed by fighters who went to fetch him from the front and that his bullet-riddled and partially burnt body was found at ranch near the rebel capital of Benghazi.
Tarhouni said a militia leader had been arrested and had confessed that his subordinates had carried out the killing.
“It was not him. His lieutenants did it,” Tarhouni told reporters late on Friday, adding that the killers were at large.

Younes had been part of Gaddafi’s inner circle since the 1969 coup that brought the Libyan colonel to power and was interior minister before defecting to the rebels in February.
Many rebels had been uncomfortable working under a man who had been so close to Gaddafi for 41 years, and rebel sources said on Thursday Younes had been recalled over suspicions that he or his family were secretly in contact with Gaddafi.
Rebels were divided over who had killed Younes, some suspecting his execution was ordered by rebel leaders for treason, many believing he was killed by Gaddafi supporters who had infiltrated rebel ranks and still others suggesting a rebel splinter group had acted alone.
Whatever the truth, the killing deepens concerns among the rebels’ Western backers, keen to see them prevail in a five-month-old civil war but frustrated by their lack of unity and nervous about the influence of Islamists.
The United States, which like some 30 other nations has formally recognised the opposition, called for solidarity.
“What’s important is that they work both diligently and transparently to ensure the unity of the Libyan opposition,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington.
Rebels who rose up against Gaddafi in February have seized swathes of the country but remain poorly equipped and are still far from ousting him, despite support from NATO airstrikes.
Anti-Gaddafi forces said on Saturday they had encircled the Libyan leader’s last stronghold in the Western Mountain region and hoped to seize it soon.

Blasts
Rebel tanks fired at Tiji, where an estimated 500 government troops are stationed, and said the blasts could be heard from the nearby town of Hawamid, which was captured on Thursday.
“We have Tiji surrounded and we hope to take it by the end of the day,” rebel commander Nasir al Hamdi, a former colonel in Gaddafi’s police force, told Reuters as gunfire crackled in the distance and he surveyed a battleground scattered with tankshell casings and government anti-aircraft bullets.
NATO airstrikes continued in western Libya overnight. NATO said it had bombed three satellite dishes in Tripoli to stop “terror broadcasting”, but Libyan state TV remained on the air.
In the east, confusion reigned over who had killed Younes.
Rebel fighters said members of the Feb. 17 Martyrs’ Brigade, a rebel group that fights on the front and helps enforce security in the rebel-held east, had collected Younes from the frontline near the oil town of Brega on Thursday.
Younes knew and trusted the men who came to fetch him and went without a struggle when they explained they had a judge’s order to take him to Benghazi for questioning, the rebels said.
The Feb. 17 Martyrs Brigade is made up largely of civilian volunteers led by military commanders and is widely used by the Transitional National Council for some policing duties.
However, Tarhouni, the rebel minister, said it was not this group but another militia, the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade, who had killed Younes.
Locals said the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade was mainly comprised of former prisoners of Gaddafi’s notorious Abu Salim prison in the capital Tripoli, who had always distrusted Younes.
Named after one of the companions of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), the group is likely to have Islamist leanings.

One rebel commander, who asked not to be named, said Islamists whom Younes had targeted as interior minister may have killed him in retaliation.
“Some of those Islamists are now fighting with the rebels and they have always refused to fight under Younes’s command and have always viewed him with suspicion,” he said.
“I don’t think the investigation will lead anywhere. They don’t dare to touch the Islamists.”
The government in Tripoli, which has always warned of Islamist influence in the east, said al Qaeda was to blame.
Further complicating an already murky situation, some Libyans said they feared that Younes’ death would trigger a bloody tribal feud. At the funeral on Friday, his Obeidi tribe pledged allegiance to the rebel cause.
But in an apparent effort to calm nerves among Younes’ relatives, a rebel source said that he could be replaced by Suleiman Mahmoud al-Obeidi, a member of the same tribe.
Another leading candidate to take over as military chief was Khalifa Heftar, who lost an early contest with Younes over leadership of the rebels’ military campaign, the source said.
The longer the war drags on, the further eastern Libya appears to slip into lawlessness, raising questions about what kind of Libya could emerge if and when Gaddafi goes.
Tarhouni told reporters on Friday night that an armed gang had attacked a prison, helping about 300 former Gaddafi soldiers and loyalists to escape.

Defected
A Syrian army colonel said on Saturday that he has defected with “hundreds” of soldiers and warned the regime against launching a crackdown on the eastern oil hub of Deir Ezzor.
The man, identifying himself as Colonel Riad al-Asaad, said in a telephone call to AFP in Nicosia that he was speaking from inside Syria “near the Turkish border.”
“I am the commander of the Syrian Free Army,” he said.
“We are hundreds,” he added of the number of troops under his command.
The claim could not be independently verified.
But the caller warned the Syrian regime against carrying out any security operations in Deir Ezzor, where activists said a massive military convoy, including tanks, deployed on Saturday.
“I warn the Syrian authorities that I will send my troops to fight with the (regular) army if they do not stop the operations in Deir Ezzor,” Al-Asaad said.
Earlier the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in Britain said soldiers shot dead three stone-throwers as a convoy of 60 military vehicles made its way towards Deir Ezzor.
Rami Abdel Rahman, quoting witness in the city, said the troops deployed in Deir Ezzor, with some of them taking positions near the offices of the governor.
Deir Ezzor is at the forefront of more than four months of anti-regime protests and scene of a deadly crackdown by the Syrian authorities against dissent.
Syrian opposition figures in Algeria spoke out on Saturday against any foreign intervention as the bloody crackdown on anti-government protests continued.

“We refuse all foreign intervention, we refuse to carry weapons,” said Adnane el-Bouch, a Syrian lawyer living in Algeria, during a meeting of a Syrian support committee at Amnesty International premises.
“It’s a peaceful revolution... our weapons are cameras and mobile phones.
“It’s not a revolution of an ethnic group or a party, but of a people.”
About 50 people gathered for the meeting with the theme “Save the Children of Syria,” during which a minute of silence was held for the young victims of the unrest.
Lawyer and committee member Nidal Debbah said that more than 100 children had died “from bullets or torture” since protests against the ruling regime of Bashar al-Assad began in March.
The committee published a list of 85 youngsters, aged three to 17, said to have been killed and screened video footage of dead and injured children.
Mustapha Bouchachi, president of the Algerian Human Rights Defence League (LADDH), meanwhile criticised his own country’s authorities.
“The position of the Algerian people is one of solidarity with the Syrian people campaigning for dignity and democracy.
“It’s a position that contradicts that of the Algerian regime.”
More than 7,000 Syrians live in Algeria, including some who have taken on Algerian nationality, according to the committee.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said 1,888 people have been killed since the protests began, 1,519 of them civilians and 369 members of the security forces.

Journalists
Libya said three journalists were killed in a Nato air strike on state television on Saturday and that the murder of the rebels’ army chief proved al-Qaeda was instigating the country’s armed revolt.
“Three of our colleagues were murdered and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists,” said Khaled Basilia, director of Al-Jamahiriya television’s English-language service.
He branded the strike “an act of international terrorism and in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.”
Libya’s opposition on Saturday ordered all militia to disband and come under their control after the slaying of one of the top military commanders in the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi.
“The time has come to disband these brigades. Anybody who refuses to take part in this decree will be tried with the full measure of the law,” said Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council.

The fighters belonging to these groups would be absorbed by the interior ministry, Abdel Jalil told a news conference in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
Libya’s opposition on Saturday slammed foreign and local media outlets over their coverage of the assassination of rebel General Abdel Fatah Yunis, whose death remains cloaked in mystery.
“Irresponsible news was published. This is unacceptable,” said Mahmud Shamman, spokesman for the opposition’s de facto government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), which is based in Benghazi.
Shammam was referring to reports, including by Libya Al-Hurra (Free Libya) television, that the “February 17” rebel group was behind this week’s killing of General Yunis.
He called on both foreign and local media “not to publish reports based on unofficial sources as this can put rebels at risk,” as individuals loyal to Gaddafi were spreading misinformation.
Speaking at a news conference, the spokesman urged journalists not to base their reports on rumours and to instead “identify your sources” as the NTC wished to maintain “the freedom of the press.”
NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil on Sunday denied the February 17 brigade had anything to do with the attack.

On Saturday, rebel official Ali Tarhuni said that some of those who carried out the assassination belonged to Jirah Ibn al-Obeidi brigade, but that the motive remained unclear.
Rebels have encircled Muammar Gaddafi’s last stronghold in Libya’s Western Mountains region and hope to seize it soon, a commander said on Saturday.
Rebel tanks fired at Tiji, where an estimated 500 government troops are stationed, and the blasts could be heard from nearby Hawamid, a town 200 kms (125 miles) southwest of Tripoli. Hawamid was captured on Thursday in a new anti-Gaddafi offensive.
“We have Tiji surrounded and we hope to take it by the end of the day,” rebel commander Nasir al Hamdi, a former colonel in Gaddafi’s police force, told Reuters as gunfire crackled in the distance and he surveyed a battleground scattered with tank shell casings and anti-aircraft bullets.
Despite inferior firepower and little experience, rebels this week took several towns and villages where government forces had been dug in along plains below the Western Mountains.

Soldiers captured in the offensive told Reuters the army had lost the will to fight and predicted that Gaddafi, who is also facing insurgents in the east of the oil-producing North African state, could fall in coming months, or even weeks.
Control of Tiji would give the rebels a strategic and psychological boost. It could make it easier for the insurgents, who hold a chain of towns stretching more than 200 km across a bleak mountain plateau from the Tunisian border, to gain access to an important highway leading to Tripoli.
Insurgents in the Western Mountains, who have been bitterly divided along ethnic lines, seemed to have improved coordination enough to work together in large numbers.
In the assault on Hawamid, for instance, hundreds of rebels in pickup trucks backed by three tanks sped down mountain roads towards the town and cut it off from government troops in other areas.
“It was very quick,” explained Hamdi, standing on a dirt fortification where he said hundreds of government soldiers and militiamen had taken up positions.