NICOSIA: At least seven people were killed when Syrian security forces fired into a crowd in the flashpoint town of Homs, as nationwide protests showed no sign of abating, rights activists said on Monday.
The deaths occurred when security forces opened fire with live rounds late Sunday to disperse demonstrators in the Bab Sba’a area of the town, 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the north of Damascus, witnesses said.
Two activists, who declined to be identified, spoke of seven dead, but a third said nine had died. They all agreed that some 20 people had been wounded.
On Sunday, regime supporters also broke up two rallies in southern Syria, wounding five people, after a presidential vow to end emergency rule within a week was dismissed as not enough and was followed by new protests.
In the country’s major port, Latakia, around 10,000 people took to the streets late on Sunday after the funeral of a protester killed on Friday, a rights activist told AFP.
The ruling Baath Party newspaper insisted on Monday that the reforms announced by Assad would be implemented "because they have become an urgent necessity in the light of the painful events which are happening across Syria".
Tensions had been running high in Homs since the announcement on Saturday that a man arrested a week earlier had died in custody.
"The security services handed back the body of Sheikh Faraj Abu Mussa a week after he was arrested in perfectly good health as he was leaving the mosque," an activist said.
On Sunday, in the nearby town of Talbisseh, at least four people were killed and more than 50 wounded when security forces opened fire on a funeral procession for a demonstrator killed the previous day, witnesses said.
"At least four people were killed, but the toll could be much higher. There were also more than 50 wounded," one witness said.
The official news agency SANA reported: "One policeman was killed and 11 others were wounded by fire from an armed criminal group in Talbisseh."
The report added: "Three armed criminals were killed and 15 others injured, as well as five soldiers.
"The criminals opened fire from buildings close to an army post near the bridge where the army had been sent to apprehend these gangs."
The opposition had called for demonstrations on Sunday, the 65th anniversary of Syrian independence, after dismissing as inadequate proposed reforms by President Bashar Al-Assad the previous day, when he promised to abolish stringent emergency laws in force for nearly 50 years.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said canceling "military courts" and revoking a law granting security agents immunity were also necessary.
And prominent Syrian human rights lawyer Haytham Maleh told AFP: "It is a step, but it is not enough. It must be accompanied by reform of the judicial system which is corrupted."
At least five demonstrators were wounded when regime agents dispersed two pro-freedom rallies in the south, bastion of Syria’s Druze minority, rights activists said.
Some 400 people had gathered to celebrate Independence Day in Suweida, said Mazen Darwish, director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression.
But regime backers cut short the rally, he said, beating protesters and trampling on portraits of Syrian revolutionary leaders who fought to end the French mandate.
In the southern town of Daraa, nerve centre of more than a month of anti-regime protests, upwards of 4,000 people, including former political prisoners and religious leaders, staged another rally.
In the northern coastal town of Banias, which has been shaken by a deadly security crackdown and shootings that residents blame on regime thugs and agents, 2,500 people demonstrated, a rights activist told AFP.
On Monday, in Jisr Al-Shoughour, close to the north-western town of Idleb, 1,500 people took to the streets after the funeral of a demonstrator killed in Banias.
The blocked the road to Aleppo and called again for the release of all political detainees, demanding news be provided of everyone who has gone missing, a human rights activist at the scene told AFP.
At least 200 people have been killed by security forces or plainclothes’ policemen since the start of the protest movement a month ago, according to Amnesty International.
