5 people killed in Al Sahaba mosque in Daraa following prayers

Scenes from protests in Idlib, Syria. Syrian political activists said that 5 people were killed on Friday after Syrian security forces shot them as they were praying in Al Sahaba mosque in Inkhal area in Daraa. Witnesses said that families were forbidden from heading to the mosque for Friday prayers, but were allowed to pray in mosques in Latakia if they were aged 55-years or more.  The activists added that a largely crowded protest took place in Kafar Nabel where security forces opened heavy fire on protestors and arrested 12 people, while arresting 4 people in Al Bazaar mosque in Latakia. Security forces also shot at protestors in Bab Al Durain in homs to break up their protest, while residents in Arkeeb village in Homs found 4 bodies in the area, in addition to snipers who spread over buildings in Al Zabadi. Further protests took place in Deir Ezzor where protestors were shot at by security force as well, according to witnesses.

In further developments, Turkey believes it is too soon to call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, a government official told AFP on Friday. "We are not there yet," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "First and foremost the people of Syria must tell Assad to go. This has not been heard in the streets of Syria," the official said. "The Syrian opposition is not united and we haven't seen yet a collective call from Syrians to tell Assad to go, like in Egypt and Libya."
 
In response to the escalating violence Syria is witnessing, and after US President Obama and other Western countries, including Britain, Germany and France, directly called on President Assad to resign, British Prime Minister David Cameron jointly with President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel issued a statement on Friday morning stating that:

"The Syrian authorities have ignored the urgent appeals made over recent days by the United Nations Security Council, by numerous States in the region, the Gulf Cooperation Council and by the Secretaries-General of the League of Arab States and of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. They continue to cruelly and violently repress their people and flatly refuse to fulfil their legitimate aspirations. They have ignored the voices of the Syrian people and continuously misled them and the international community with empty promises.

"France, Germany and the United Kingdom reiterate their utter condemnation of this bloody repression of peaceful and courageous demonstrators and the massive violations of human rights which President Assad and his authorities have been committing for months. We are actively supporting further strong EU sanctions against the regime of President Assad.

"We urge the Syrian regime to stop all violence immediately, to release all prisoners of conscience and to allow free access to the United Nations for an independent assessment of the situation.

"Our three countries believe that President Assad, who is resorting to brutal military force against his own people and who is responsible for the situation, has lost all legitimacy and can no longer claim to lead the country. We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people.

"Violence in Syria must stop now. Like other Arab peoples during recent months, the Syrians demand that their rights to liberty, dignity and to choose freely their leaders be recognised. We will continue to work with the Syrian people, countries in the region and our international partners, with a central role for the United Nations, to support their demands and achieve a peaceful and democratic transition.”

On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council is to hold a special session on Syria requested by 24 members, including four Arab members -- Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. US President Barack Obama has led a chorus of calls by world leaders for Syria's president to step down, as the United Nations warned his regime could be guilty of crimes against humanity. Obama also slapped harsh new sanctions on Syria, freezing state assets and blacklisting the oil and gas sector, in an escalation of pressure aimed at halting a bloody protest crackdown that has claimed more than 2,000 lives. The White House later expressed hope that the European Union would follow suit, conscious that the United States has only limited leverage over Damascus compared to the Europeans, whose oil purchases help to bolster the regime.

It was the first explicit US call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign since the pro-democracy uprising -- inspired by the revolts that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia -- erupted in mid-March. "We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside," Obama said. His call was quickly echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. "We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people," the trio said in a joint statement. Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said it was "already a fact on the ground, the military and police operations stopped in Syria". President Assad had said the same in a phone call with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Mr Ja'afari also accused the US of waging a "diplomatic and humanitarian war" against Syria together with some other UN Security Council members.

The UN is to send a humanitarian mission to Syria on Saturday to assess the situation there after Damascus' violent crackdown on protesters. The UN humanitarian chief said Damascus had pledged the mission "will have full access to where we want to go". UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos announced the much-delayed mission after the Security Council was briefed on a shoot-to-kill policy against protesters, stadium executions and children feared killed in Syrian government custody. Ms Amos added that the team - organised by the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) - would "want to concentrate on those places where there have been reports of fighting".

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal said they were preparing a Security Council sanctions resolution. The United States strongly backed the move, but resistance was expected from veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the new US sanctions banning investment and most other economic activities in Syria as well as imports of Syrian oil and gas would "strike at the heart of the Syrian regime." White House spokesman Josh Earnest later told reporters on board Air Force One that the Obama administration expected the European Union to unveil fresh economic sanctions on Syria "soon."
European nations import most of the oil from Syria, which exported some 148,000 barrels a day in 2009, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration. "America doesn't have the ability to do it alone. But they are acting as a choir-master and hoping that by setting an example, Europe will pull the plug," said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

A Syrian government spokesman accused Western governments of increasing the tension in the country. "It is strange that instead of offering [Damascus] a helping hand to implement its programme of reforms, the West and Obama are seeking to stoke more violence in Syria," Reem Haddad, of the information ministry, told AFP news agency. "All the wars and invasions that were taken on behalf of this Security Council were based on lies." Ja'afari told reporters. "The Iraqi weapons of mass destruction opened the way for the Security Council to invade Iraq. It was a big lie, acknowledged by [former US Secretary of State] Colin Powell as we all know. "So nothing happens but lies when it is related to the activities of these influential members of the Security Council who are using the Security Council as an instrument to justify their illegitimate actions."

The UN human rights chief has asked the Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court for investigation of alleged atrocities against anti-government protesters. Navi Pillay's remarks on Thursday came hours after the US President Barack Obama and the EU called on  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Navi Pillay told reporters after the council meeting in New York that she recommended the referral because a UN fact-finding commission reported that all its evidence supported a finding of "widespread and systematic violations'' of human rights and crimes against humanity. However, she said she did not "hold out much hope'' for a court referral. The UN fact-finding commission said in a report released on Thursday that it had compiled evidence implicating 50 people at various levels of government who could be prosecuted over the Syrian crackdown.
News agencies said the investigators discovered that 26 men were blindfolded and shot dead while in government custody.

In other cases, security forces allegedly killed wounded civilians by putting them alive in refrigerators in hospital morgues, Reuters news agency said. The UN's investigators were not allowed into Syria. They interviewed victims and witnesses of the violence, some in Syria, and others in the region. "The mission found a pattern of human rights violations that constitutes widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population, which may amount to crimes against humanity," the UN investigators said. The report, released in Geneva, urged the UN Security Council to "consider referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court".
Protesters took to the streets across Syria on Thursday night, including in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, Homs and several towns in Deraa governorate in the south. Activists said the security forces continued its crackdown in several cities despite claims by the Assad government that military and police operations against protesters had stopped. Shooting was reported in the central city of Homs and in the Damascus suburb of Dumeir.
Rights group Avaaz said there been fresh attacks on civilians in Latakia earlier in the day, with regime forces claiming to crack down on "terrorist gangs" in the Palestinian camp of al-Ramel.

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) said security forces backed by army were carrying out arrests in Deir ez-Zor. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said soldiers and members of the security forces took up positions in the town of Zabadani outside Damascus and in some of the capital's suburbs.