6 killed, tanks near Iraq as Syria faces backlash (AFP)

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Six civilians were killed Tuesday and tanks were deployed near Syria's border with Iraq, activists said as President Bashar al-Assad came under sharp pressure to halt a crackdown on democracy protests.

"Six civilians perished in the past few hours in Ariha," east of Jisr al-Shughur, an activist told AFP in Nicosia, without providing further details.

The latest deaths came after fresh protests erupted in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, a rights activist said, and troops pursued a scorched earth campaign in northern mountains, sending thousands fleeing into Turkey.

Activists said security forces were continuing their operations and the sweep of the villages near Jisr al-Shughur, the flashpoint northeastern town which the army took by force on Sunday.

Forces stationed in Jisr al-Shugur shot dead a family of four on Monday, London-based rights activist Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Violence has claimed the lives of 1,297 civilians and 340 security force members in Syria since the unrest erupted mid-March, according to the latest toll by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released Tuesday.

The United States meanwhile accused Iran of backing Syria's assaults on pro-democracy protesters, and again called on Assad to cease the violence and allow for a political transition or step aside.

"Iran is supporting the Assad regime?s vicious assaults on peaceful protesters and military actions against its own cities," Clinton said, comparing its response to Iran's crackdown on pro-reform protests in 2009.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said earlier: "President Assad needs to engage in political dialogue. A transition needs to take place. If President Assad does not lead that transition then he should step aside."

European powers meanwhile kept campaigning for a draft resolution condemning the crackdown, with one top envoy saying the delay in Security Council action has cost hundreds of lives.

Russia and China strongly oppose UN action against Assad and could veto any resolution.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned Syria's President Assad on Tuesday, urging him to stop the crackdown and launch reforms, Anatolia news agency reported.

Erdogan told him to "refrain from violence and end the unrest" and stressed "it would be useful to draw up a timetable of reforms as soon as possible and urgently implement them," said the agency.

The two leaders have enjoyed close personal ties amid flourishing Turkish-Syrian ties in recent years, but Ankara's insistent calls on Damascus to initiate reforms have gone unheeded so far.

Last week, Erdogan toughened his tone, accusing the Syrian regime of perpetrating an "atrocity" against the demonstrators, as thousands of fleeing Syrians crossed into Turkey to seek refuge from bloodshed.

The prominent Syrian poet Adonis, in an open letter published Tuesday in a Lebanese daily, called on Assad to let Syrians decide their own future.

"It seems your destiny is to sacrifice yourself for the mistakes and to give back voice to the people and let them decide," he wrote in the letter.

The United Nations said more than 10,000 Syrians have fled into neighbouring countries to escape the crackdown.

There are 5,000 people in Lebanon, said UN humanitarian affairs spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. A Turkish official said Tuesday there are now more than 8,500 Syrians who have crossed into Turkey.

UN emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos made a new appeal to the Syrian government to let a UN humanitarian team make a proper assessment.

Syria has refused to let UN aid experts visit stricken towns and blocked rights investigators from entering the country.

Refugees arriving in Turkey said fighting had also broken out among Syrian troops on Sunday as soldiers bent on destroying the area were confronted by others trying to defend the townsfolk.

Elements from one tank division had even taken up positions by bridges leading into the town in a bid to defend it, they said.

"The troops are divided," said 35-year-old Abdullah, who fled Jisr al-Shughur on Sunday and sneaked over the border into Turkey to find food.

"Four tanks defected and they began to fire on one another," he said, adding troops had now reached Ziayni, a town just six kilometres (four miles) from the Turkish border.

"They torched all the crops, they slaughtered the goats, the cows," he said.

Those claims could not be confirmed, as Syria has prevented journalists from entering the area.

Syria blames what it says are foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs" for the unrest, and says troops launched operations in Jisr al-Shughur at the request of residents and after 120 policemen were massacred there.

Rights activists say those being killed are unarmed protesters and deny a massacre in Jisr al-Shughur, saying bloodshed erupted during a mutiny by soldiers who refused to fire on the town's residents.

Syria slammed as crackdown accounts mount (AFP)

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Harrowing eyewitness accounts mounted on Saturday after Syrian forces backed by helicopter gunships killed at least 25 protesters, prompting the US to toughen its stance on President Bashar al-Assad.

As the turmoil neared the three-month mark, the international outcry grew over Assad's use of deadly force against his own people, with protests planned in more than a dozen world cities including Montreal, New York and Paris.

An estimated 3,000 mourners on Saturday filed through the coastal city of Latakia for the funeral of one of at least nine protesters shot dead by security forces the day before, activists said.

The mourners chanted slogans praising the "martyrs," an activist who was present said.

Around the country, 25 people were killed on Friday, including three in the Qabun district of Damascus, after protesters took to the streets after the main weekly Muslim prayers, activists said.

Fridays have become a rallying point in the revolt against Assad's regime, whose backlash on pro-democracy protests that erupted in mid-March has killed more than 1,200 civilians, rights groups say.

The death toll mounted as detailed accounts emerged from some of the thousands of refugees who fled to Turkey from bloodshed in the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughur.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that helicopters flying over the town of Maaret al-Numan, near Jisr al-Shughur, had fired on a police station which protesters had seized.

State television reported that "armed terrorists" had opened fire there, killing and wounding members of the police and security forces.

The broadcaster said the Jisr al-Shughur operation had come "at the request of residents" to deal with "armed gangs." Soldiers had arrested "elements of the armed groups" there, it added.

Rights activists said Jisr al-Shughur was largely deserted after most of its 50,000 inhabitants fled, many to neighbouring Turkey, as tanks and troops began converging there midweek.

Syrian army deserters who also fled to Turkey have told of atrocities committed by soldiers in suppressing protests, under threat of execution if they disobeyed orders.

With a blank stare in his eyes, Tahal al-Lush said the "cleansing" in Ar-Rastan, a town of 50,000 people in Homs province, pushed him to desert.

"We were told that people were armed there. But when we arrived, we saw that they were ordinary civilians. We were ordered to shoot them," said Lush, who showed his military passbook and other papers as proof of identity.

"When we entered the houses, we opened fire on everyone, the young, the old... Women were raped in front of their husbands and children," he said.

A second conscript, Mohammed Mirwan Khalaf, said he was in a unit stationed in Idlib, near the border.

"Just in front of me, a professional soldier pulled out his knife and stabbed a civilian in the head, for no reason," he said.

The turmoil has pushed 4,600 Syrians to seek refuge across the border in Turkey, a government official in Ankara told AFP.

In the Turkish city of Antakya, Nabil, one of the last Syrian aid workers out of Jisr al-Shughur, recalled the roar of helicopters and a "skull split in two" before he collapsed with a bullet in his back.

From his hospital bed, the Red Crescent employee recounted his last sights of the town last weekend, where Damascus said 120 police and troops were massacred amid anti-regime protests.

"The wounded, yes, I've seen hundreds. And dozens of deaths, maybe a hundred," the 29-year-old said, adding that he also saw victims of torture.

Washington significantly toughened its stance on Syria on Friday, calling for an "immediate end to brutality and violence" and warning Assad was leading his nation on a "dangerous path," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that the Security Council should support a resolution demanding an immediate end to the crackdown.

"A veto by Russia and China to protect the Syrian government and block efforts to stop the killings would be a serious betrayal of Syria's beleaguered citizens," said Philippe Bolopion, UN director at the rights watchdog.

Al Jazeera: Reporter freed after vanishing in Syria (Reuters)

DUBAI (Reuters) – An Al Jazeera journalist who went missing in Syria three weeks ago has been released after she was apparently detained and sent to Iran, the Qatar-based television channel said on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera had assigned Dorothy Parvaz to the Syrian capital of Damascus to cover a wave of protests that have posed the boldest challenge yet to 41 years of rule by President Bashar al-Assad and his family.

"On Wednesday morning, the Al Jazeera network confirmed that she had been released and was safe and in good health," Al Jazeera said in an online statement about Parvaz, who has U.S., Canadian and Iranian nationality.

"She landed in Doha, Qatar on May 18 on a flight from Iran," Al Jazeera said, adding that Parvaz had not been allowed contact with the outside world since it lost contact with her after her flight landed in Damascus on April 29.

Her disappearance sparked widespread online calls for her release, including a Twitter hash tag and Facebook page "Free Dorothy Parvaz."

Al Jazeera said that Parvaz's fiance posted on Facebook: "She is safe in Doha and will be coming to Vancouver, B.C. soon. We can't wait to see her."

(Writing by Erika Solomon; editing by Cynthia Johnston and Mark Heinrich)

Tanks storm south Syria city as U.S. piles on pressure (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) – The West warned of more pressure on Syria on Tuesday if a crackdown against pro-democracy protests continues, hours after tanks stormed a city in the south, cradle of an uprising against Baathist rule.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that both the European Union and the United States -- which have already slapped sanctions on a number of senior Syrian officials but not on President Bashar al-Assad -- were planning more steps.

"We will be taking additional steps in the days ahead," Clinton said, saying she agreed with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who told reporters that the time for Syria to make changes was now.

Rights activists say a crackdown to crush a two-month wave of protests against Assad has killed at least 700 civilians.

Syrian tanks moved into a southern city in the Hauran Plain on Tuesday after encircling it for three weeks, activists said.

Soldiers fired machineguns in the air as tanks and armored personnel carriers entered Nawa, a city of 80,000 people 60 km (40 miles) north of the southern town of Deraa, according to activists from the region.

"The troops are now combing neighborhoods in Nawa and arresting scores of men," one activist said.

In Deraa, tanks remained in the streets after the old quarter was shelled into submission last month and residents gave accounts of mass graves which the authorities denied.

The southern towns of Inkhil and Jassem remained also besieged, rights campaigners said, adding that mass arrests continued in the Hauran Plain and other regions of Syria.

Assad had been partly rehabilitated in the West in the last three years, but the use of force to quell dissent in the last two months has reversed that trend.

The United States had condemned the crackdown as "barbaric."

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday France and Britain were close to getting nine votes for a resolution on Syria at the U.N. Security Council, but Russia and China were threatening to use their veto.

Half of Kuwait's 50 lawmakers urged the Gulf Arab state on Tuesday to cut ties with Syria and expel its ambassador in protest at the violence to crush the protests.

Villagers near Deraa have found two separate graves containing up to 26 bodies, residents said on Tuesday, but Syrian authorities dismissed such reports as part of "campaign of incitement" that targeted the country.

Four residents told Reuters that villagers had contacted the local civil defense after noticing two mounds of earth in wheatfields just outside Deraa's old city district. Under the mounds were 22 to 26 decomposed corpses, they said.

Their reports could not be verified because authorities have barred most international media from operating in Syria.

Since Assad sent tanks into Deraa three weeks ago, the army has moved into several other protest centers in the south, around the capital Damascus and on the Mediterranean coast.

The government blames most of the violence on armed groups backed by Islamists and outside powers, saying they have also killed more than 120 soldiers and police.

Soldiers moved on Saturday into the town of Tel Kelakh, close to Lebanon's northern border.

Human rights campaigners said scores of people had been arrested since Monday and that Assad's forces were firing at several neighborhoods in the city of 30,000 people.

Citing witnesses, the Local Coordination Committees, an activists' group, said several people were killed in Tuesday's offensive, adding to 12 civilians already killed by army shelling, shooting and sniper fire in the last three days.

A Reuters correspondent on the Lebanese side of the border heard shooting and could see smoke rising from the village of Arida, which lies between Tel Kelakh and the border.

"They destroyed the houses, they cut electricity and water. The wounded are dying in our hands and the dead are strewn on the streets," a Tel Kelakh resident told Reuters by telephone.

She said she was hiding in a basement with seven families.

State news agency SANA said security forces clashed with "wanted armed terrorist members" in Tel Kelakh on Monday, killing several and capturing others, and seizing weapons, ammunition and military uniform. Fifteen members of the security forces were wounded, it quoted a military source as saying.

In her stone house just a few meters inside Lebanese land, Umm Fatima said she had sent her nine children to the nearby village of Wadi Khaled for safety.

"All night and day, there's gunfire. I'm so scared it will reach our homes -- I don't dare leave my home," she said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were also mass arrests in the cities of Homs, Deir al-Zor and Latakia, which security forces had "robbed of normality."

Assad has tried a mixture of reform and repression to stem the protests, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world.

Authorities say he intends to launch national dialogue talks, a gesture rejected by opposition leaders and the main activists' protest group who say security forces must first stop shooting protesters and political prisoners must be freed.

The Facebook page Syria Revolution 2011 called for a general strike across Syria on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Wadi Khaled, Lebanon, and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Diana Abdallah)