Two Killed as Top Syrian Activist 'Severely' Beaten
A woman was shot dead in eastern Syria on Sunday and a teenager died of wounds suffered at a funeral in the capital Damascus on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"A 40-year-old woman was killed at noon on Sunday by a stray bullet as security forces were tracking wanted people in the town of Bukamal," the Britain-based rights group cited an activist in Deir al-Zour province as saying.
The Observatory also told Agence France Presse that a youth had died of wounds received on Saturday when security forces opened fire on mourners at the funeral of an activist in Daraya, near Damascus.
"A 17-year-old succumbed to his wounds on Sunday after security forces the day before fired on a crowd at the funeral of Ghiyath Matar," it said.
Matar, 26, had been a key player in organizing protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and died in detention after being tortured, according to the international watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW).
His body, which was returned to his family on Saturday after his arrest on September 6, bore bruises on the chest and signs of injuries to the face, activists cited by HRW said.
Matar disappeared on the same day as one of his friends, Yahya Sharbaji. The two were detained in a car after a chase by security forces in the Sehnaya district of the capital, according to a relative.
The latest deaths come after security forces killed at least 12 people on Saturday in their ongoing bid to crush anti-regime dissent, activists said, and as the Arab League announced an agreement with Assad on long-promised reforms.
Also on Sunday, the Observatory said prominent rights campaigner Najati Tayara was in a "very bad" health condition after being "severely" beaten at a Homs prison in central Syria.
It said in a statement received by AFP that it "has learned that investigators at the so-called 'Polish' prison in Homs severely beat Tayara on Friday.
"He is in a very bad health condition. He has been moved to the military intelligence division in Damascus," it added.
Tayara, 66, was arrested in Homs on May 12, a day after he reported that shelling and gunfire had rocked the city, the country's third largest.
"He was referred to court on charges of harming the prestige of the state," the statement said, adding that he was released from Homs central prison on August 31 but later rearrested.
According to the Observatory, security forces have arrested "more than 70,000 people" in their crackdown on anti-regime protests that erupted in mid-March, and "15,000 of them are still in detention."
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi met Assad on Saturday with a 13-point document outlining Arab proposals to broker an end to the bloodshed, hold elections and push for reforms.
During his talks with Assad, Arabi said the League and other Arab countries "reject any form of foreign interference in Syrian domestic affairs," the official news agency SANA reported.
Arabi said upon returning to Cairo that they had reached an "agreement on steps to carry out the reforms, (and) the elements will be submitted to the council of the Arab League" in Cairo on Monday.
SANA reported Assad as saying that there was a need "to not get caught in campaigns of disinformation against Syria."
It said he denounced the campaign of spreading "wrong facts" aimed in his opinion "to harm the image of Syria and destabilize" the country.
The United Nations says more than 2,200 people -- mostly civilians -- have been killed in a crackdown on almost daily protests by pro-democracy and anti-regime demonstrators in Syria since mid-March.
Rights groups say more than 10,000 people are behind bars.
The Syrian regime blames the violence on “armed terrorist gangs.”
Source: Agence France Presse
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