BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Syrian Army has defied growing condemnation and launched a new assault on the most contentious in the country on Sunday, the deployment of dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in the parts of a city is that Syria had always feared provoking activists and residents. Dozens of people died, they said, and thousands have fled the city.
The attack before dawn in the eastern part of the city, in Deir al-Zour came exactly one week after Syrian troops attacked Hama, Syria, in the city center, in turn largely wrested control of the state this summer . As Hama, Deir al-Zour, Syria's oil and gas production, was the scene of mass protests, with hundreds of thousands in the streets. But the military, wary of powerful and well-armed clans advanced cities, had largely stayed out.
Together, the two cities - the fourth and fifth of Syria - were the most suspicious of a survey of five months against four decades of rule by the Assad family. After a week of sharp rebuke by a chorus of international voices, the United Nations for the Pope renewed the attack confirmed what many consider the determination of President Bashar al-Assad to stay in power through violence.
Including some human rights groups, has more than 2,000 people were killed in the attacks so far.
Other signs of pressure on the government were introduced, perhaps above all indications that the business elite in Damascus, he began to prepare for the fall of the government. This elite has long proven one of the most important pillars of the Syrian authorities, especially during the Islamic uprising in 1982.
"The regime is its own worst enemy, and can be saved from itself," said a Damascus-based analyst, who asked to remain anonymous. "It has been the collapse, but the question is what will lead to and when."
Residents of the death toll at Deir al-Zour, 42, and one of them said that a family of six people trying to escape - a couple with four children - was among the dead. The activists said that many residents have left in recent days. A local man who gave his name as Mamun said the truck filled with no fewer than 25 women and children fled to the streets every abandoned.
He said there were shortages of fuel and bread. Other residents said the private hospitals have closed, but that families were reluctant to take their wounded to the government, not to be arrested. At night, another resident said that Syrian forces had come to a roundabout in the center of the city, formerly called Assad and the Plaza of Martyrs name. "
"The city has never known a day like this," said Maamoun telephone, with bursts of gunfire heard in the background.
On weekends, calls for restraint mounted. The Arab League expressed "growing concern" Sunday and asked the authorities to stop attacks against the demonstrators. Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for Assad to meet the "legitimate aspirations" of the people of Syria and Turkey announced it was sending his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu in Damascus on Tuesday, with a similar message.
In a statement to Al Arabiya television on Monday, called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the violence unacceptable and said he remembers the Saudi ambassador in Damascus.
For weeks, activists had predicted that the Syrian Muslim holy month of Ramadan would bring an escalation of the insurgency, as every night demonstrators gathered in mosques, then organized the demonstrations. Instead, the government decided it was time for a large-scale assault on the cities seemed most determined to shake off the yoke of the security forces everywhere.
From Deir al-Zour and Hama are the targets of repression that involve risks specific to Syria.
In 1982, Hama was the victim of one of the bloodiest moments in the history of the Modern Middle East, where the army crushed an Islamist revolt there and killed at least 10,000 people. The attack last week in which more than 200 people lost their lives, feelings inflamed by Syria.
Deir al-Zour may be no less frustrating for the government, but for different reasons. Armed and fiercely independent, the clans have extensive ties there are tribes in eastern Syria and western Iraq. In recent days, some of its leaders had sworn to give to the peaceful demonstrations and to take up arms if the attacking force, but no reports of injuries on Sunday the government.
The city is also home to the complaints of government neglect, compounded by the feeling that people have not participated in the region's oil and gas wealth. "I can say that the clock will never return," said a leader of a clan, who identified himself as Abu Mohammed Ala'aqidi.
Days, the army forces had been built on the outskirts of Deir al-Zour. Traveler recently there about 150 tanks, 200 armored vehicles and 200 microphones mounted machine guns were posted throughout the city. Local Coordination Committees, a group that has tried to document and organize the protests, said the attack began before dawn, the soldiers captured nine suburbs.
"We're completely surrounded," said the pilot who gave the name of Abu Omar.
Introduction The attack was familiar. Although no weapons were seen Hama visit shortly before the siege, officials claimed the army had come there to fight the armed Islamists, who were terrorizing the city of 800,000
On Saturday, he offered a narrative similar to that of Deir al-Zour, with a population of 500,000. A report by the official Syrian news agency, SANA, the clan elders had called the army to go into "protect citizens and preserve public and private property."
Residents reached by telephone offered a different account.
"Syria needs to now be managed by the officials hard, not politicians," said Ammar, a 26 year old activist in Deir al-Zour. "I fear that the country is entering a dark cave, and everyone is a loser. Loser The first is President Assad and his regime."
Tensions have mounted in Deir al-Zour last month when security forces arrested Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, a figure bearing the clan. Clan elders and Syrian security officials and military have been negotiating for several days, but Sunday assault seemed to signal the government's intention to take the city by force, activists said.
"The government has been very careful to start a military operation in our region," Ammar said, "because most of the tribesmen are armed with AK-47 rifles and others, and are willing to fight and let the system to do the same thing as he did in Hama, or Dara'a "the city where the rebellion began in March.
"If the government has attacked Deir al-Zour, which all the tribes in the other provinces show against the Assad regime," he added.
There have been periodic reports of defections in the military Deir al-Zour, although still seem to be limited, and does not constitute an immediate threat to Assad, who inherited power in 2000. Coordinating Committees, said that other soldiers have deserted Jour quarter of the city on Sunday.
"He jumped soldiers trying to protect residents of the storm the city," the committee said. There was no immediate confirmation of the report by the inhabitants there.
Deir al-Zour was not only to attack the government. Syrian forces also attacked Houla, near Homs in central Syria, and northwest of Idlib. The committee said 12 people died in Hula, including three children.
The scale and ferocity of the repression gave a facade almost surreal persistent desire to reform government. In the last Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Saturday that the real multiparty elections for Parliament in the first rule of the Assad family, would take place later this year. SANA quoted him as saying that the elections "free and transparent."
The same day, the promise of Mr. Moallem, security forces arrested Walid al-Bunni, a leading opposition figure and former political prisoner, with his two children. Mr Bunni has been a driving force called Damascus Spring, an attempt to organize a movement for democratic reform in 2000, Assad soon crushed.
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