HRW slams Syria after protester deaths

DAMASCUS: Human Rights Watch on Saturday condemned Syria's "deliberate policy" of dispersing protesters with deadly force after activists said security forces killed at least 15 people in the latest protests.

The deaths came on Friday as Damascus accused the US envoy to Syria of inciting violence in the city of Hama, where activists said nearly half a million people took part in a demonstration.

Washington roundly denied the charge and accused the Syrian embassy in Washington of spying on demonstrators in the United States.

Opposition activists reported five deaths on Friday in the central city of Homs, two in the capital's commercial neighbourhood Medan, six in the Dmeir area, east of Damascus, and two in the Maaret al-Numan area of the northwest.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces also arrested more than 200 people nationwide on Friday, more than half of them in Homs.

New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a damning criticism of Syrian security forces for firing on unarmed civilians. An embassy in Damascus on Friday to condemn Ford's trip to Hama, an AFP journalist said.

State news agency SANA said "tens of thousands of people" marched in Damascus, Aleppo Syria's second-largest city and Deir Ezzor in the east, against foreign intervention and to show their support for Assad's reform programme.

Washington summoned the Syrian ambassador after reports that embassy staff had filmed US protests against the Syria crackdown, the State Department said on Friday.

"We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under ambassador (Imad) Mustapha's authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States," it said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011