Syria is accusing US Ambassador Robert Ford of inciting violence Security forces killed at least 15 people and arrested more than 200 people in Syria, activists said, as Human Rights Watch denounced on Saturday a \"deliberate policy\" to disperse protesters with deadly force.
The deaths came as Damascus accused the US envoy of inciting violence in Hama -- where nearly half a million people protested on Friday -- a charge roundly denied by Washington which accused the Syrian embassy of spying on demonstrators in the United States.
Opposition activists reported five deaths Friday in the central city of Homs, two in the capital\'s commercial neighbourhood Medan and six in the Dmeir area, east of Damascus.
Security forces machine-gunned protesters at Maaret al-Numan in the northwest, killing one and wounding five, an activist said.
Soldiers also fired at a family car on the Hama-Aleppo road near Maaret al-Numan, killing a man and wounding his wife and two daughters, the activist added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces had also arrested more than 200 people around the country on Friday, more than half of them in Homs.
The London-based watchdog\'s director Rami Abdel Rahman said a record 450,000 Syrians rallied after Friday prayers in Hama, an opposition bastion, under the banner \"No to dialogue\" with Assad\'s regime and called for its ouster.
Both US envoy Robert Ford and French ambassador Eric Chevallier visited the city on Thursday.
Damascus accused Ford of meeting with \"saboteurs\" there and of inciting people to violence, but the State Department said the ambassador had done no such thing and had gone as an international observer with the regime\'s knowledge.
The foreign ministry called Ford\'s presence in Hama \"obvious proof of the implication of the United States in the ongoing events, and of their attempts to increase (tensions), which damage Syria\'s security and stability.\"
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she was \"dismayed\" by such criticism and stressed that Syrian authorities knew of the visit in advance.
The ambassador met \"average Syrian citizens\" and \"certainly did not incite anyone to anything,\" US embassy press attache JJ Harder told AFP.
Harder also took issue with government claims that armed gangs are the problem in Hama -- where activists say regime forces have killed 25 people since Tuesday -- stressing that Ford \"saw no evidence of this.\"
Dozens of regime supporters demonstrated outside the American embassy in Damascus on Friday to condemn Ford\'s trip to Hama, an AFP journalist said.
State news agency SANA said \"tens of thousands of people\" marched in Damascus, Aleppo -- Syria\'s second-largest city -- and Deir Ezzor in the east, against foreign intervention and to show their support for Assad\'s reform programme.
Washington summoned the Syrian ambassador for talks after reports that embassy staff had filmed US protests against the crackdown in Syria, the State Department said Friday.
Imad Mustapha was called in to meet with top State Department officials \"to express a number of our concerns with the reported actions of certain Syrian embassy staff in the United States.
\"We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under ambassador Mustapha\'s authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States.\"
Rights groups say that security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians and arrested at least 12,000 since anti-government protests erupted in mid-March.
New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a damning criticism of Syrian security forces for firing on unarmed civilians and for beating detainees, based on testimony from alleged defectors.
\"All of the interviewed defectors told Human Rights Watch that their superiors had told them that they were fighting infiltrators (mundaseen), salafists and terrorists,\" a statement said.
\"The defectors said they were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead, but still were ordered to fire on them in a number of instances. The defectors also reported that those who refused orders to shoot on protesters ran the risk of being shot themselves.\"
One defector spoke of an incident in Homs, where \"protesters had sat down in the square.\"
\"We got an order ... to shoot at the protesters. We were shooting for more than half an hour. There were dozens and dozens of people killed and wounded.
\"Thirty minutes later, earth diggers and fire trucks arrived. The diggers lifted the bodies and put them in a truck. I don\'t know where they took them.\"