Syrian troops attack rebel town, hold mass arrests

Demonstrators protest against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad after Friday prayers in Homs Syrian troops stormed Saturday a central town and a northwestern region in search of opponents of the government as pressure on Damascus intensified to end an eight-monthcrisis that has left thousands of people dead, activists said.
Activists said at least 25 people were killed in the raids.
Six civilians were killed by gunfire from security forces, in several operations in the restive provinces of Homs, Hama and Idlib, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Another person was shot dead by a sniper in Homs, Syria's third-largest city, the head of the Britain-based group said.
A mutinous officer earlier reported that two army deserters were killed in clashes with regular troops in Qusayr, in Homs province.
The attacks on the town of Shezar in the central province of Hama and the restive Jabal Al-Zawiya region near the Turkish border came a day after Syria agreed in principle to allow Arab observers into the country to oversee a peace plan proposed by the 22-member Arab League.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said that land and cellular telecommunications as well as electricity have been cut in the Jabal Al-Zawiya region where army defectors have been active for months.
Syrian state news agency SANA said authorities in Idleb on Saturday also arrested more than 140  men in Jabal al-Zawiyeh and the rural areas of Ma'art al-Numaan. Sixty of them were arrested in Kafr Nubl and Kafr Roma.
Syrian security forces shot dead 25 people on Friday as they opened fire to disperse protesters urging countries to expel Syria’s ambassadors, activists told Al Arabiya, as Russia called for restraint over the Damascus crisis. Ten soldiers were also killed in the clashes.
The latest bloodletting comes on the eve of a deadline by the Arab League for Syria to stop the lethal crackdown on protesters seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, or face sanctions.
Meanwhile, Syria has asked for amendments to a plan to send Arab League observers to Syria to assess the situation there where troops are cracking down on anti-government protests, the League chief said on Friday.
Facing growing isolation, Syria has been told by its Arab peers to stop the lethal repression against protesters by 2200 GMT on Saturday or risk sanctions, and the Arab League has suspended it from the 22-member bloc.
The Syrian request is being studied, the League said.
League chief Nabil Al-Araby said in a statement he had received a letter from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem “including amendments to the draft protocol regarding the legal status and duties of the monitoring mission of the Arab League to Syria” agreed by a League ministerial council on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
“These amendments are now under study,” the statement quoted Araby as saying.
He said the Syrian request was made in a letter received on Thursday evening.
Khaldoun Qassaam, Head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Syrian Parliament, blamed the Arab League for the delay in taking practical steps required to put the work plan into action.
In the last few weeks, residents say a growing number of army defectors have been defending Maarat al-Numaan and attacking army patrols and roadblocks.The town, on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, has seen regular street protests demanding Assad's removal and raids by security forces to put down the demonstrations.
Activists had called for massive protests on Friday to press countries to expel Syrian ambassadors and further isolate Damascus, which is faced with Western and Arab sanctions.
“They are the ambassadors of crime. Expel them, O free ones,” the Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the main groups behind the protests, said on its Facebook page.
Another umbrella group of activists, the Syrian Revolution General Commission, also called for nationwide protests “until the regime falls.”
Counter-rallies were held in some parts of Damascus, SANA reported, with people taking to the streets to protest against Arab pressure on Syria and foreign intervention in domestic affairs.
Meanwhile the LCC reported that the SANA director in Deir Ezzor, Alaa al-Khodr, “resigned in protest over the regime's actions towards civilians.”
“Khodr taped his mouth shut and wore a sign that said: ‘I am a Syrian journalist’,” the LCC said in a statement received in Nicosia.
But SANA denied the report saying Khodr had quit for a university job five months ago.
The authorities blame the violence on foreign-backed armed groups who they say have killed more than 1,100 soldiers and police.
Meanwhile,  William Hague, the British foreign minister, announced that he would meet with Syrian opposition representatives in London next week in an intensification of contact with opponents of President Bashar Al-Assad.
The Syrian opposition members would also meet senior aides of David Cameron, the UK prime minister, at his Downing Street office, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
It said that Frances Guy, the former British ambassador to Lebanon, had been appointed to co-ordinate relations with the Syrian opposition.
The delegation would include members of the opposition Syrian National Council and the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, in meetings expected to take place on Monday, a Foreign Office source said.
"We have been having regular contacts with a variety of figures in the Syrian opposition for several months. We are now intensifying these," the Foreign Office said.
Iran said the suspension was "a historic mistake" and would in itself cause civil war.
"The path the Arab League has taken is completely about defeating Syria from inside and triggering a civil war," Alaaddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy committee, said on a visit to Turkey.
The repression against demonstrations that erupted in mid-March has claimed more than 3,500 lives, according to UN estimates.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, called for restraint over the Syria crisis, after talks with his French counterpart who accused President Assad of being deaf to pressure.
Russia has accused the Syrian opposition of stoking the unrest in the country, a position that has irked the West which wants Moscow to join unequivocal international pressure against Assad.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon issued a sterner statement against Damascus, saying Assad was ignoring international calls for reforms and an end to the lethal crackdown on demonstrators.
“We consider that the situation is becoming more and more dramatic. Bashar al-Assad has stayed deaf to the calls of the international community and has not followed up reform promises and the massacres are continuing,” Fillon said, according to AFP.
“We think that it is indispensable to increase international pressure and we have tabled a resolution at the United Nations. We hope it will find as wide support as possible,” he added.
Diplomats from Germany, France and Britain tabled a resolution condemning human rights abuses by the Syrian government at the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee on Thursday for a vote expected next Tuesday, officials said.
Success could increase pressure on the U.N. Security Council to act over the Syria crisis. Russia and China last month vetoed a council resolution condemning the deadly crackdown by Assad’s forces.
But Putin emphasised that Russia was ready to work with the international community.
“We are not intending to neglect the opinion of our partners and we will cooperate with everyone,” he said.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned on Friday of the possibility of a civil war in Syria that either is directed or influenced by Syrian army defectors.
"I think there could be a civil war with a very determined and well-armed and eventually well-financed opposition that is, if not directed by, certainly influenced by defectors from the army," Clinton told the US network NBC.
"We're already seeing that, something that we hate to see because we are in favour of a peaceful ... protest and non-violent opposition."
In the meantime, dozens of protesters gathered in front of the US consulate in west Jerusalem on Saturday in support of the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Arab-Israeli and Palestinian protesters waved Syrian flags and held portraits of Assad, an AFP photographer reported. Israeli police and security guards deployed outside the consulate did not intervene.
"Down with imperialism and the reactionary conspiracy against Syria," one banner read. Another said: "Hands off Syria."
Other signs denounced Qatar and the Arab League, accusing both of joining a common front with the Unites States against Damascus.