Activists reported widespread anti-regime protests across Syria on Tuesday on the first day of the feast marking the end of Ramazan, with at least seven people killed by gunfire from security forces. The latest flare-up came as EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged President Bashar al-Assad to stop the violent crackdown on protesters and a day after the European Union moved to ban oil imports from Syria.
The Local Co-ordination Committees said "seven people were killed on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Syria, including four in the town of Al-Harra and two in Inkhil, in the Daraa province, and one in the city of Homs." Daraa is a flashpoint province in southern Syria where pro-democracy protests that have rattled the autocratic regime first erupted in mid-March.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, reported "three people were killed and nine wounded when security forces opened fire to disperse a huge demonstration in Al-Harra after the (first) Eidul-Fitr prayers" marking the end of the holy fasting Muslim month.
The Committees said protesters rallied after the early morning prayers that are traditionally held on the first day of Eid, with protests reported in Nawa, Dael and other districts of Daraa. It said although Nawa's main Imam al-Nawawi mosque was closed, worshippers gathered outside before staging a protest, and that soldiers later surrounded them and opened fire.
The Committees said a "huge" protest formed as worshippers emerged from Al-Omari mosque in Daraa and marched to the cemetery. Muslims traditionally visit their dead on the first day of the feast. In the Daraa village of Dael, "children covered in shrouds, instead of (new) Eid clothes, led a protest of some 10,000 people who emerged from the local mosque," it said.
It also reported anti-regime demonstrations in Damascus and its suburbs, in Syria's second city Aleppo, in Deir Ezzor in the east, the port of Latakia and Qamishli in the north. The Committees also reported demonstrations in the Damascus neighbourhoods of Qaboon and Qadissiya, and said security forces were deployed outside Barza, another district in the capital. "Thousands marched in the city of Palmyra, heading for the cemetery after the Eid prayers" and chanting anti-regime slogans, the group said, adding in Hama there was "intermittent gunfire" to prevent demonstrations.