Syrian Security Shoots Mourners

BBC News reports:

Security forces in Syria have shot dead at least 12 people at funerals for anti-government protesters killed on Friday, reports say.

They opened fire on mourners gathering in parts of the capital Damascus and near the flash-point southern town of Deraa, witnesses said.

At least 82 people reportedly died on Friday, the bloodiest day in some five weeks of unrest.

Two MPs and a senior Muslim cleric from Deraa have resigned in protest.

Friday's bloodshed, which came a day after President Bashar al-Assad scrapped decades of emergency rule, drew strong international condemnation.

Nearly 300 people are believed to have been killed since unrest erupted in the middle of last month.

Syria's state news agency has reported a limited number of protests in some provinces and described the violence as the work of armed criminal gangs.

With foreign journalists unable to get into Syria, accounts of casualties - carried by eyewitnesses, opposition activists and human rights groups - cannot be verified independently.

The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones in Beirut says it appears that the government has made a deliberate decision to use live ammunition, to clear the streets and to impose order.

With many people in Syria now openly calling for an end to President Assad's rule, he says the government realises its survival is at stake and it is fighting hard.

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