At Least 50 Dead as Syria Sees Biggest Demos Yet on 'Children's Friday'

Syrian security forces shot dead at least 25 people while dispersing tens of thousands of demonstrators in the central city of Hama on Friday, activists said, as anti-regime protests spread to Damascus.

Activists in the city told Agence France Presse by telephone that dozens of other people were wounded.

Meanwhile, a witness in Hama told pan-Arab satellite television Al-Jazeera that more than 50 people were killed when security forces opened fire on protesters in the city, while Al-Arabiya television quoted opposition activists as saying that more than 67 people were killed in Hama.

And another activist told AFP that the death toll from Hama protests “might go above 50,” describing what happened as a “real massacre.”

Security forces unleashed "intense gunfire" against a crowd of more than 50,000 people in Hama, according to Rami Abdul Rahman who heads the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It was the largest demonstration in Hama since the mid-March outbreak of an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, he said.

The official SANA news agency, however, reported "hundreds of people gathered after Friday prayers in Hama chanting diverse slogans" but that security forces and police had stayed away.

In 1982, Hama was the scene of a brutal crackdown that left an estimated 20,000 people dead when the Muslim Brotherhood rose up against the late Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad.

Thousands of demonstrators on Friday also rallied in and around Damascus, which so far has been largely spared the protests rocking Syria for more than 10 weeks, another rights activist said.

About 2,000 people marched in Rukn al-Din suburb and police armed with batons beat demonstrators in the southern Damascus district of Midan in a bid to break up a rally, said Abdul Karim Rihawi of the Syrian League for Human Rights.

Thousands more joined rallies calling for the end of Assad's regime across Damascus province, including in Jdaidet Artuz, Daraya and Zamalka.

"All the measures taken by the authorities to calm the street have failed," Rihawi said in apparent reference to Assad's decision on Wednesday to launch a "national dialogue" and decree an amnesty for hundreds of political prisoners.

Near the southern protest hub of Daraa, security forces opened fire to disperse a crowd in Jassem, a rights activist told AFP, as protesters also gathered in nearby Dal and in Kurdish towns of northern Syria.

Overnight, in several cities including Aleppo in the north and Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria residents took to rooftops to chant "God is Greatest," a slogan taken up by the opposition, said Abdul Rahman.

A government crackdown which focused earlier this week on the flashpoint Homs region left at least 75 civilians and military personnel dead since Sunday, according to the rights group chief.

Syrian state television on Friday broadcast the accounts of three suspected members of an "an armed criminal group" who said they had "killed demonstrators and security agents" in Homs.

Al-Baath newspaper, viewed as the mouthpiece of the Baath party which has ruled Syria since 1963, quoted the men as saying they had "cut roads" and "burnt public buildings" in exchange for money and guns.

Residents, meanwhile, said Internet lines were cut in Damascus and the coastal city of Latakia on Friday, in a repeat of a suspension of services at the start of April.

Syrian activists called the latest protests over the dozens of children killed in anti-government protests such as 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib whom activists say was tortured to death, a charge denied by the authorities.

"The people want the fall of the regime. Tomorrow, it's 'Children's Friday' of rising up against injustice, like the adults," the activists announced on their Facebook page Syrian Revolution 2011, an engine of the uprising.

The U.N. children's agency UNICEF says at least 30 children have been shot dead in the revolt against Assad's autocratic rule that erupted in mid-March.

The revolt in Syria was sparked by the arrest and torture of 15 children and adolescents accused of painting anti-regime graffiti in Daraa, which became a flashpoint of the deadly protests.

More than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested in a brutal crackdown on almost daily anti-regime demonstrations in Syria since March 15, human rights organizations say.

The government insists the unrest in Syria is the work of "armed terrorist gangs" backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Snubbing government concessions that included the release of some political prisoners and a call for a national dialogue, opposition groups at a meeting in Turkey demanded late Thursday for Assad's "immediate resignation."