DAMASCUS, Aug 14, (Agen-cies): Syrian military vessels joined an assault that killed 26 people on Sunday in the port city of Latakia, activists said, the first attack from the sea since an anti-regime revolt erupted in mid-March.
The state-run news agency SANA denied that the navy had attacked Latakia, however, quoting its correspondent there as saying security forces were battling gunmen.
Activists said four other people were killed elsewhere in the country a day after world leaders demanded an immediate end to the ruthless crushing of dissent in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 23 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Latakia, while the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria (NOHRS) put the death toll at 26.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory said the vessels opened up with heavy machine guns and the NOHRS confirmed the report, calling the attack “unprecedented.”
“In unprecedented action... the Syrian regime used navy boats to shell innocent civilians in the province of Latakia,” the NOHRS said in a statement.
It provided a list of 26 victims — including two Palestinian men from the Ramel refugee camp in southern Latakia — and said that two other people died in Homs, one in Hama and one in Idlib.
Ships are “attacking Latakia and explosions have been heard in several districts,” the Syrian Observatory said, adding that the main target was the suburb of Ramel in southern Latakia.
A spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNRWA, Chris Gunness, said reports from the Ramel camp spoke of “fire from tanks which have encircled the area as well as fire from ships at sea.”
He called on the Syrian authorities “to order their troops to exercise maximum restraint,” and demanded “access for humanitarian workers to tend to the injured and dying.”
“Poor communications make it impossible to confirm numbers of those killed and injured,” Gunness said in a statement.
SANA, quoting its Latakia correspondent, denied that naval vessels had opened fire on the city.
The agency said its correspondent “denied reports carried by some media that said Ramel was shelled from the sea.”
“Law enforcement members are pursuing armed men who are using machine guns, grenades and bombs in Ramel from rooftops and from behind barricades,” it said.
The head of medical services in Latakia was quoted as saying that two members of the security forces were killed and 41 others wounded in the city “while chasing armed men.”
The reported navy attack on Latakia was the first since anti-regime protests erupted five months ago. In May naval vessels patrolled off the coast of the port of Banias but did not open fire.
On Saturday, the military killed at least two people and wounded 15, also in Ramel, a nerve centre of protests calling for the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the Syrian Observatory.
“Large numbers of residents, especially women and children” have fled Ramel and Qniniss, another district targeted by heavy gunfire, it said.
Meanwhile landline telephones and Internet connections with the city were cut, and train services to and from Latakia province were suspended, activists said.
Security forces also surged into the Damascus suburbs of Saqba and Hamriya overnight, cutting communications, firing shots and making arrests, said the Syrian Observatory.
It said troops arrived in “15 military trucks, eight troop carriers and four jeeps,” launching the assault at around 2:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday). “Gunfire was heard in both suburbs.”
Meanwhile rights groups issued a joint statement on Sunday urging authorities to release the head of the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights, Abdel Karim Rihawi, who was arrested on Thursday in Damascus.
In a telephone conversation on Saturday, US President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah 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,” a statement added.
Sanctions
Canada said Saturday it had expanded sanctions on Syria, including blacklisting a commercial bank and a mobile phone provider, to protest the government’s brutal crackdown on protests.
The new sanctions include travel bans on four officials, including Mohammed Mufleh, head of military security in the flashpoint city of Hama, and Mohammed Makhlouf, an uncle of President Bashar al-Assad.
Canada will also freeze the assets of the state-run Commercial Bank of Syria, the country’s largest commercial bank, and Syriatel, its largest mobile phone company.
The United States imposed sanctions on the two firms earlier in the week, and has joined European allies in sanctioning top officials close to Assad.
“Canada reiterates its strong condemnation of the ongoing violent military assault by the Assad regime against the Syrian people,” Foreign Minister John Baird said in a statement.
A Jordanian died of his wounds on Sunday after he was hit by sniper fire last week in the Syrian city of Homs, a hotbed of that county’s anti-regime revolt.
“Tareq Mohammed al-Khaldi, 20, died today in King Abdullah I hospital,” near the northern city of Irbid, Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency reported.
“Khaldi was taken to hospital on Thursday after he was hit by sniper fire as he was driving his car during a visit to relatives in Homs.”
Petra gave no details on the first officially reported Jordanian fatality in the neighbouring country’s unrest. But a local news website said Khaldi was shot in the head.
Syrian 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 Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 2,150 people have since been killed — 1,744 civilians and 406 members of the security forces.