SYRIA: Government crackdown leaves streets of Hama scarred and empty

Record ID: 279933

  • Title: SYRIA: Government crackdown leaves streets of Hama scarred and empty
  • Date: 12th August 2011
  • Summary: CHILD ON STREET VARIOUS OF PEOPLE ON STREET ANTI-ASSAD DEMONSTRATION PEOPLE CHANTING ANTI-ASSAD SLOGANS (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) HAMA RESIDENT, MOHAMMAD, SAYING: "They burned down our shops, our homes and confiscated our belongings. Hama is burned down and torn to the ground. Go and check the alleys, people are dying of hunger. We have nothing but our god."
  • Embargoed: 27th August 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Syrian Arab Republic
  • Country: Syria
  • Topics: Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAF2A2TVKC1MGVYI8BR4HGHPKYY
  • Story Text: The tanks may have gone, but the streets of Hama were empty on Thursday (August 11).
    Windows were shuttered and most shops closed after a week-long Syrian military assault to crush protests in the central city which has become a symbol of defiance against President Bashar al-Assad.
    A day after Syrian authorities announced the army had pulled out, following a crackdown in which activists said scores of people were killed, the government appeared in full control.
    No tanks could be seen -- but armed, uniformed men stood on rooftops, soldiers manned a series of checkpoints into the city, and the governor's building in the central square was flanked by two military vehicles fitted with machine guns.
    A group of Turkish journalists, escorted around Hama by Syrian officials, were taken to a burned out police building, two charred vehicles still standing outside it.
    Other scars of Hama's week-long turmoil included a metre-wide hole blown into the back of the Hamidiyeh Mosque, and signs of heavy firing on the walls of buildings at the city entrance.
    The visit, two days after Turkey's foreign minister traveled to Damascus to urge Assad to end the bloodshed, appeared aimed at showing the army had -- at least in one city -- returned to barracks, as well as reinforcing a government message that armed groups were behind most of the violence.
    Elsewhere the military crackdown, in which right groups say at least 1,700 civilians have died, has continued.
    Troops killed at least five people in an assault on a town near the Lebanese border on Thursday, a day after 18 people were killed in the city of Homs, activists say.
    Authorities have blamed armed extremists for the violence and say 500 soldiers and police have also been killed.
    Journalists were taken to a bridge over the Orontes River in Hama where officials say the mutilated bodies of at least 13 members of the security forces were found.
    Several residents, speaking through Syrian official translators, said the army moved in after the city was taken over by groups who had blocked roads and burned state buildings.
    Outside the Hamidiyeh Mosque, a group of young boys started chanting slogans for Assad's overthrow.
    One youth approached the group of journalists, his face masked and only his eyes visible, to deliver his message.
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