Syrian Police Kill 26 Protesters

The New York Times reports:

Thousands of Syrians defied a ferocious crackdown and took to the streets Friday in what appeared to mark new momentum and a potentially dangerous turn in the nine-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Human rights activists said at least 26 people were killed when security forces opened fire in several cities.

In an unsettling sign for the government, protesters gathered in somewhat greater numbers in the capital, Damascus, which has remained relatively quiet until now. Far bigger crowds than last week also took part in protests in Baniyas, a coastal town that the government had declared quiet after deploying troops there weeks ago, and Homs, a city in central Syria that is emerging as a locus of the challenge to Mr. Assad’s authority.

Activists who provided details of the gatherings said some protesters in the most restive neighborhood of Homs raised a version of Syria’s flag that predated the Assad family’s rule. And in Albu Kamal, a town near the Iraqi border, a resident said protesters burned a municipal building and stormed a jail, freeing prisoners.

The turnout, though still far short of the mass demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, suggested that the government’s sweeping crackdown, in which hundreds have been killed and thousands were arrested, is proving incapable of crushing the dissent. Though the government has offered tentative steps toward reform, opposition figures have demanded an end to the government’s violence, a step it so far appears unwilling to take.