At least 17 killed in Syria opposition protests

PanARMENIAN.Net - Syrian troops killed at least 17 people Friday, September 16 in raids on anti-government protesters, activists said, but failed to stop thousands from pouring into streets nationwide and taking their uprising against President Bashar Assad's autocratic rule into a seventh month.

The activists reported new demonstrations from the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs to the southern province of Daraa, where the protest movement was born in mid-March. Crowds also gathered in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour as well as the province of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast and central regions.

The Friday protests — which have become a weekly ritual after the midday Muslim prayer services — were held under the banner "We will continue until we bring down the regime." Syria's uprising, which is targeting one of the Middle East's most repressive regimes, began amid a wave of anti-government protests in the Arab world that have already toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Assad has reacted with deadly force that the U.N. estimates has left some 2,600 people dead.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces shot dead 17 protesters. The greatest bloodshed was in the northwestern region of Jabal al-Zawiya, where 10 people were killed in raids. At least five people were killed in the central province of Hama and two in the central city of Homs. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, put Friday's death toll from protests and raids at 19.

Syria has disputed accounts of civilian deaths and says the regime is fighting terrorists and thugs — not true reform seekers. A senior Assad adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, said Monday that the toll since March was really 1,400 — evenly split between security forces and the opposition, The Associated Press reported.