Fierce clashes in Damascus, army attacks towns

AFP, BEIRUT, March 24, 2012 – Fierce clashes erupted between the Syrian army and deserters in the Damascus region overnight, and assaults on several towns on Saturday resulted in more fatalities, activists and monitors said.
’Very violent’ clashes broke out in the area round the capital during the night, activist Mohammed al-Shami told AFP.
He reported that explosions and small arms fire could be heard across a large part of Damascus province and in districts of the city itself, as anti-regime protests were staged in Douma and Artuz close to the capital.
A huge night-time demonstration also took place in the Kfar Sousa district of Damascus, where eight people were wounded on Friday when security forces opened fire to disperse protesters, videos posted on YouTube showed.
Videos posted by activists also featured overnight protests in several districts of the country’s second city Aleppo.
Shami said the security services and Shabiha regime militiamen also launched search and arrest operations in the Damascus district of Al-Asalli.
On Saturday, security forces shot dead one civilian in Saraqeb in the northwestern region of Idlib and another was killed at Khorbet Ghazaleh in southern Daraa province the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It was in Daraa that the revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad first broke out in mid-March last year. Since then, at least 9,100 people have been killed, according to estimates by monitors.
The regime blames the violence on ’armed terrorist groups.’
The Britain-based Observatory also reported that the central protest hub of Homs and the nearby town of Qusayr have been under mortar fire from the army since early on Saturday.
And in the central province of Hama, the town of Qalaat al-Madiq which the military has been trying to take for two weeks also came under mortar bombardment and heavy machinegun fire, the NGO said.