Assad Names New PM as Thousands of Mourners Rally in Douma
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appointed former agriculture minister Adel Safar the new premier on Sunday and asked him to form a government as thousands joined the funeral procession for protesters killed in Douma.
Cell phone and internet networks failed for several hours on Sunday "due to an overload", according to a customer representative, a day after authorities carried out a wave of arrests in protest cities.
Assad asked Safar to form a new government, the state-run news agency SANA reported Sunday, having sacked his entire cabinet in a bid to quell pro-democracy protests.
Meanwhile, Douma, a suburb north of Damascus still reeling from a fatal crackdown by security forces against pro-reform demonstrators, observed a mass funeral with thousands of sympathizers streaming in from neighboring towns.
"People are very sad," a resident told Agence France Presse as the town buried eight people killed in a crackdown by security forces on Friday. "They want to make it up to the families so they are promising more protests."
The administrators of Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011 said thousands of mourners in Douma staged a demonstration after the burial of the eight victims.
The group also called for a "Week of the Martyrs" protest across Syria to honor those killed in the security clampdown.
"The Week of the Martyrs will be a thorn on the regime's side," the organizers of the Facebook group.
The group unveiled its protest plans ahead of the mass turnout in Douma.
It trumpeted fresh protests on Tuesday, especially in towns "far from the capital," designating Jabla and the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia as protest centers.
The group also pushed for a Wednesday boycott of mobile phone companies after Syriatel and MTN rewarded customers with one free hour in recognition of pro-regime ralliers.
And the rallying call for Thursday took aim at the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, setting its headquarters as the protest point.
On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, thousands of Syrians marched across the country after midday prayers, calling for reforms, disappointed by a presidential speech which failed to lift a state of emergency in place since 1963.
Eight human rights groups said 46 people were arrested in raids on the southern town of Daraa, one of three main centers of more than two weeks of demonstrations, as well as Douma, north of Damascus and the industrial city of Homs.
"We condemn this extremely violent and unjustified way the Syrian security services dealt with peaceful rallies in Douma where police used excessive force against demonstrators," they said in a joint statement.
The rights groups reported that four people died and dozens were wounded in the crackdown. A human rights activist reported eight dead.
A witness told AFP security forces used live ammunition to disperse stone-throwing protesters after noon prayers.
The authorities denied the security forces were responsible for the deaths, blaming them on an "armed group" which opened fire from rooftops on both demonstrators and police.
They acknowledged an unspecified number of deaths and said dozens were wounded, some of them policemen.
State television charged that "some of the demonstrators had daubed their clothes with red dye to make foreign reporters believe that they had been injured".
Some 200 people demonstrated outside the courthouse in Daraa, a tribal town near the Jordan border, where security forces arrested eight people between a morning raid and a round-up after the protests, an activist told AFP.
Security forces carried out a series of raids in the area, another activist said, adding that architect Khaled al-Hassan, lawyer Hassan al-Aswad and teacher Issam Mahameed were among those detained.
Youssef Abu Rumiyeh, a member of parliament for Daraa, denounced security forces for opening fire on his constituents "without pity" and criticized Assad for not offering his condolences.
The security forces "opened fire on the citizens of Daraa, killing and injuring them and preventing the wounded from getting to hospital", said Rumiyeh, in a video uploaded on YouTube.
"The people of Hauran were waiting for President Assad to visit to offer his condolences. Had he done so, nothing that happened subsequently would have taken place."
In Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 17 arrests while authorities accused another "armed group" of firing on demonstrators in the industrial city and killing "one girl".
The rights group demanded the release of all prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, and called for measures to ensure the safety of peaceful protests.
Source: Agence France Presse
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