DAMASCUS, July 31, (Agencies): Syrian forces killed nearly 140 people on Sunday including at least 100 when the army stormed the flashpoint protest city of Hama to crush dissent on the eve of Ramadan, activists said. Activists said it was one of deadliest days in Syria since demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15 demanding democratic reforms before turning their wrath on the regime and calling for its ouster. As reports of the brutal crackdown on Hama unfurled, US President Barack Obama and European leaders condemned the crackdown which a US diplomat described as “full-on warfare.” “It is one of the deadliest days” since the protests erupted, said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Death tolls provided by the Observatory and other human rights groups showed at least 136 people were killed across Syria, most of them falling in Hama, while scores were wounded. “One hundred civilians were killed on Sunday in Hama by gunfire from security forces who accompanied the army as it stormed the city,” said Abdel Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights.

Rihawi said five other people were killed in the central city of Homs and three more in the northwestern province of Idlib when security forces opened fire on protesters who rallied in support of Hama.
The head of the National Organisation for Human Rights, Ammar Qorabi, put the Hama death toll at 95. The Observatory’s Abdel Rahman said 47 people were killed in and around the central city but the toll could rise.
“The number of those wounded is huge and hospitals cannot cope, particularly because we lack the adequate equipment,” Abdel Rahman quoted a Hama hospital source as saying.
Abdel Rahman said the crackdown on Hama came after more than 500,000 people rallied in the city on Friday following Muslim prayers during which a cleric told the congregation “the regime must go.”
Activists also reported deaths in Deir Ezzor, Syria’s main gas- and oil-production hub in the east which has become a rallying point for protests along with Hama.
At least 19 people were killed in Deir Ezzor, six in Herak in the south, and one in Al-Bukamal in the east, said Qorabi, adding most of those shot in Deir Ezzor were “hit in the head and the neck” by snipers.
Abdel Rahman meanwhile told AFP that protesters set ablaze 24 army troop carriers in the Masrib region west of Deir Ezzor.

“They threw Molotov cocktails on a military convoy to stop it from advancing on Deir Ezzor and set ablaze 24 troop carriers,” he said.
The Syrian Revolution 2011, an Internet group that has been a driving force behind the protests, urged demonstrators to gather nationwide after Ramadan “taraweeh” evening prayers later Sunday “for retaliation protests.”
“Syria is bleeding” it said.
Western powers condemned the violence amid warnings from Berlin and Paris of fresh sanctions against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
US President Barack Obama said Sunday he was “appalled by the Syrian government’s use of violence and brutality against its own people” and paid tribute to the “courageous” demonstrators who have taken to the streets.
“In the days ahead, the United States will continue to increase our pressure on the Syrian regime, and work with others around the world to isolate the Assad government and stand with the Syrian people,” Obama said.

A US diplomat in Damascus told BBC World Service radio that the violence in Hama amounted to “full-on warfare” and an act of desperation.
“There is one big armed gang in Syria, and it’s named the Syrian government,” said JJ Harder, the press attache at the American embassy in Damascus.
And senior Republican Senator John McCain accused Syrian authorities of carrying out a “massacre” and told AFP “I hope that there will be a move to bring charges to the International Criminal Court.”
Germany threatened to slap new sanctions on Damascus along with its EU partners as France warned that Syria’s leaders “will have to answer for their deeds,” and Italy called the Hama crackdown a “horrible act.”
Criticism also came from neighbour Turkey, which said it was “deeply saddened and disappointed... by the current developments on the eve of holy month of Ramadan.”
Residents in Hama said the army entered the city with tanks at around 6:00 am (0300 GMT) before gunfire erupted, in an apparent operation to wrest back control after security forces withdrew almost two months ago.
The official SANA news agency charged that gunmen shot dead two security forces in Hama while a colonel and two soldiers were “martyred” in Deir Ezzor.

SANA said the gunmen torched police stations and attacked private and public property in Hama, adding soldiers tore down barricades and checkpoints set up by the armed men at the city’s entrance.
Abdel Rahman said the army also launched an operation against Muadhamiya in the Damascus region at dawn, “with tanks blocking the southern, eastern and western entrances to the town”.
The Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights reported more than 300 people detained in Muadhamiya and said that on Saturday Bagara tribal chief and opposition figure Nawwaf Ragheb al-Bashir was seized in Deir Ezzor.
Activists also reported pro-Hama demonstrations in several parts of Syria, including in the Harasta town near Damascus where, according to the Observatory, 10 people were wounded when security forces opened fire on a crowd of 4,000 protesters.
In 1982, an estimated 20,000 people were killed in Hama when the army put down an Islamist revolt against the rule of Assad’s late father, Hafez.
The president replaced the governor of Hama after a record 500,000 protesters rallied in the opposition bastion on July 1 calling for the fall of the regime.
At least 1,583 civilians and 369 members of the army and security forces have been killed since mid-March in Syria, according to the Observatory.

Libya
Libya’s rebels routed a militia group accused of assassinating their military chief and of links to Muammar Gaddafi, they said, after an hours-long battle Sunday in their Benghazi stronghold.
Medics and rebels said at least four rebel and 11 pro-Gaddafi fighters were killed in the fierce shootout, which erupted around dawn during a raid on the cell holed up at a roadside factory in the eastern city.
“It was a long battle and it took many hours because they were heavily armed,” rebel spokesman Mahmud Shammam told AFP. “In the end we arrested 31 of them. We lost four people.”
Doctor Morad Drissi at Al-Jalaa hospital said 11 of the pro-Gaddafi fighters were killed and that he treated 42 wounded rebels.
Motasem Nayed, a surgeon at Benghazi Medical Centre, said: “Four rebels remain in the intensive care unit, most of them in critical condition”.
Shammam said the group suffered “about 20 casualties” before being rounded up for its role in organising a prison break in Benghazi earlier in the week.

The rebels said they mounted the operation after the armed group refused to enter negotiations, flouting an order from the opposition’s National Transitional Council (NTC) for all brigades outside its newly formed unified command structure to disband and lay down their arms.
The pro-Gaddafi cell “had plans to plant car bombs in Benghazi,” according to Mustafa al-Sagazly, deputy chief of the rebel-backed February 17 brigade which carried out the raid.
“We found a large number of explosives typically found in car bombs.”
He added the “very same group” — the Katiba Yussef Shakir — was suspected in the assassination of General Abdel Fatah Yunis, a right-hand man to Gaddafi before his defection to the rebel ranks, whose death remains cloaked in mystery.
Ismail al-Salabi who heads military operations for the February 17 brigade called the operation “100 percent successful.”
The factory contained TNT explosives and about seven pickup trucks armed with machine guns, a rebel told AFP.

“There were also green flags and portraits of Gaddafi which we took and burned,” said Mohammed Duma.
In the aftermath of Yunis’s assassination, the NTC has issued repeated warnings to militia groups — or kataebs — that remain outside its command to either join its fighters on the front or security forces in Benghazi.
Fareed Juwayli, head of security forces in Benghazi, said a rebel militia had uncovered the group linked to Gaddafi’s regime holed up in a hanger that was home to licence plate factory.
Among them were several prisoners who had escaped in the prison break, the security chief said.
While the rebels have been trying to quash rumours about the mysterious death of their army chief, the Gaddafi regime said Sunday it was in contact with members of the NTC.
“There are contacts with Mahmud Jibril (number two in the NTC), and (Ali) Essawy (in charge of external relations), (religious leader Ali) Sallabi and others,” deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaaim told a Tripoli news conference.
Gaddafi on Saturday night renewed his pledge “never to abandon” the battle, in an audio tape broadcast on state television despite NATO air strikes earlier the same day on the broadcaster’s headquarters in Tripoli.
Libya’s enemies would be “defeated in the face of the resistance and courage of the Libyan people,” he said in a speech following the strikes which Tripoli said killed three journalists.
South of Benghazi, rebels reported an attack by pro-Gaddafi forces on the southern oasis town of Jalo, but said it had been repulsed.
Rebels also promised a “surprise” in the strategic oil hub Brega.

“We are in the suburbs of Brega and I can see its lights sparkling in the short distance. Expect a surprise,” said al-Salabi.
On the western front in the five-month-old armed revolt, Libyan rebels on Sunday took the village of Josh at the foot of the Nafusa mountain range, AFP journalists said.
“We took Josh this morning and are now heading west. Now we’re fighting to take Tiji,” further down the valley, Juma Brahim, head of the rebel fighters’ operational command in the Nafusa region, told AFP.
He gave a casualty toll of three dead and four wounded.
The Nafusa region has seen heavy fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi since the insurgents launched a major offensive this month in a drive on Tripoli.
NATO said its warplanes carried out 50 strike sorties on Saturday, with hits in the areas of Brega, Zliten, Waddan and Tripoli.
France said on Sunday it was committed to striking Gaddafi’s military assets for as long as needed for him to quit power, and called on Libyans in Tripoli to rise up against him.
“We say to Gaddafi that we will not ease our pressure and to his opponents that we will not abandon them,” French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet was quoted as saying by the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. “Things have to move more in Tripoli... the population must rise up,” he added.

Yemen
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on Sunday for dialogue with his opponents during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan to help resolve a crisis over demands for his removal which has paralysed Yemen and confounded efforts at mediation.
The opposition has previously rejected invitations to negotiate, saying talks can only take place after Saleh signs a Gulf Arab plan to ease him out of power after 33 years in office.
“There is no alternative to dialogue which sets out from national and constitutional principles,” said Saleh in a statement issued for Ramadan and carried by the state news agency Saba.
Saleh has frustrated hundreds of thousands of Yemenis who hoped they had seen the last of him when he flew to Saudi Arabia, where he is still convalescing after undergoing eight operations following an assassination attempt in June.
He has proved a wily political survivor, holding on to power despite six months of protests against his rule and international pressure on him to leave.
“We reiterate on this occasion the need for commitment by all sides to the Gulf initiative,” Saleh said, referring to the plan which he has three times appeared to accept and then backed out of signing at the last minute.
“The political state which Yemen has reached ... makes it incumbent upon us to work together to get past it.”

The political impasse has paralysed the impoverished state, which is on the brink of civil war with rebels in the north, separatists in the south and army generals defecting from Saleh.
Yemen’s south has descended into bloodshed in recent months, with Islamist militants suspected of links to al-Qaeda seizing areas of the flashpoint province of Abyan, including Zinjibar, its capital.
Western powers and neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia fear al-Qaeda is exploiting the security vacuum in Yemen, from where it has previously launched failed attacks against the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, government airstrikes in southern Yemen targeting al-Qaeda-linked militants accidentally killed 40 pro-government tribesmen, a Yemeni security official and a tribal chief said Saturday.
The botched airstrikes reflect the deteriorating security situation that has spread across the impoverished, heavily armed country since the popular uprising against Saleh began six months ago.
Armed tribesmen are battling government forces in a number of areas around the country, and Islamist militants, some linked to al-Qaeda, have overrun entire towns in the country’s restive south and are now fighting government forces and tribes that remain loyal to Saleh.

The president has clung to power despite the months of protests and being seriously wounded in an attack on his palace compound in the capital, Sanaa, on June 3. His wounds forced him to travel to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, and he has yet to return. But Saleh has maintained his power through his son, who controls some of the country’s best trained military forces.
The movement seeking an end to the president’s 33 years in power got a boost Saturday with the announcement of a new tribal alliance whose leaders are pledging to defend the uprising.
Yemen’s Tribal Alliance will group together one of the most powerful tribal confederations, the Hashid, and a number of tribes from the country’s largest tribal confederation, the Bakil.
The Hashid leader already turned against Saleh in March, and fighters under his command have battled loyalist troops in the capital and elsewhere.

“I pledge to you that Saleh will not rule us after today,” said the Hashid leader, Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar. He said the alliance will protect the protesters and provide security where government forces are failing to do so.
The US and other nations worry that al-Qaeda and other groups could exploit the turmoil in Yemen to step up operations.
The airstrikes hit just east of the town of Zinjibar, near Yemen’s south coast, which Islamist militants overran earlier this year. Since then, government forces and armed tribesmen have been battling to push them out, causing regular casualties on both sides.
Security official Abdullah al-Jadana said Saturday that men from the Fadl tribe advanced on Zinjibar, killing two militants and occupying a government communications building before at least three airstrikes hit the area late Friday, he said.
Tribal chief and field commander Mohammed Gaadani said the number killed in the airstrikes has risen to 40 people. He said his forces had notified the government of their locations and he condemned the strikes.

Egypt
The trial of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak will be held at a police academy in Cairo, with a maximum of 600 people allowed to attend although proceedings will be televised, the presiding judge said on Sunday.
A source close to Mubarak, who has been in hospital since April when he was first questioned, said on Thursday the former president’s lawyer would tell the court he was too sick to attend the trial due to start on Wednesday.
A cabinet statement said the public prosecutor sent a letter to Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawy calling for Mubarak to be present . An official at Mubarak’s hospital said his health was “relatively stable” but his psychological state was worsening.
If he is absent due to sickness, that could further anger protesters who want a public trial.

Many Egyptians see Mubarak’s illness and detention in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh as a ploy for the army rulers to avoid publicly humiliating their former commander. He has so far been spared transfer to a Cairo prison where his two sons and other officials are held awaiting trial.
“In God’s words, if you are to judge people, you must do so with justice,” judge Ahmed Refaat, who is presiding over Mubarak’s case, told a news conference. The briefing was delayed due to a crush of journalists wanting to hear about the case.
Mubarak is charged with a range of offences, the most serious of which is conspiring over the killing of protesters during the uprising which led to his overthrow in February. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
Protesters and ordinary Egyptians accuse Mubarak, who ruled for 30 years, of leading a corrupt system that routinely tortured people in detention and crushed opponents. They blame him for killing about 850 people in the uprising.

Mubarak will stand trial with his sons Gamal - who was once viewed as a possible successor - and Alaa, along with former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli, a business executive and confidant Hussein Salem ,and six other police officials.
Alongside court officials and lawyers, those allowed to attend the trial include close relations of the accused and accredited journalists, Refaat said. Only the Egyptian state broadcaster would be allowed to set up television cameras.
Some members of the public will be allowed to register beforehand to attend. Family members of victims of the uprising and activists had crowded in to hear previous court hearings for the former interior minister and other senior officials.
“The court is fully convinced of the Egyptian people’s right to follow what happens in the courtroom in terms of legal procedures,” Refaat said.
Egyptian trials were not traditionally broadcast, but high-profile cases since the uprising that ousted Mubarak on Feb 11 are now televised after protesters demanded more transparency.
After the initial chaos at the news conference, Refaat asked that “the honourable attendees” allow “justice and the law be thoroughly followed and (allow) the court and defence team the ability to complete their duties.”

Mubarak’s health was an increasingly frequent subject of rumour as he aged in office, and now as he awaits trial.
The official state news agency quoted an official at his hospital as saying Mubarak’s X-rays and tests were “satisfactory, for someone of his age”. He also said the “mental state of the former president continued to deteriorate” although his state of health was “relatively stable”.
The police academy on the outskirts of Cairo where he will be tried was originally named after Mubarak, but his name in big concrete letters was torn down after the uprising.
Refaat also said the court had a right to convene at dates that had not been previously scheduled, suggesting the court would have greater freedom than normally permitted to proceed with the case and associated hearings.
Another judge, Refaat al-Sayyed, who is not involved in the case, told state television this could mean that sessions are held daily on working days to ensure a swift resolution of “the historic case all Egyptians are watching.”

Egyptian political groups said on Sunday they would suspend demonstrations during Ramadan, which starts on Monday, but would resume a campaign for swifter democratic reforms by the ruling army after the Muslim fasting month is over.
Many Egyptians have grown tired of the protests, which have disrupted traffic in city centres. Nerves are often frayed during Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. Ramadan this year falls during the height of the summer heat.
The groups said they would continue to demand that the army council, which took over after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February, speed up reforms and the prosecution of former officials who face corruption and murder charges.
Most of the groups were among those who pulled out of a protest on Friday after accusing Islamist groups of having hijacked the event, which had been organised to send a united message to the army.
The groups’ supporters have been camped out in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square and other areas around the country since a protest on July 8.

“Several political parties and youth groups have decided to suspend sit-ins temporarily throughout the holy month of Ramadan, assuring a return ... for peaceful sit-in in Tahrir Square for other demands to be achieved,” 26 groups said in a joint statement distributed by email.
More than 840 people died in the 18-day protest groundswell that overthrew Mubarak. Police used rubber bullets, live ammunition, tear gas and batons against demonstrators.
Many Egyptians have also criticised the way the head of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, has handled the transition ahead of what are supposed to be the country’s first free and fair elections later this year.
Islamists and more liberal groups have diverged on how hard to press the ruling generals for change. They have also been divided over the constitution, which is to be rewritten after a new parliament is elected.
Liberal groups fear the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s best organised group, and other Islamists will dominate the vote.