75 Killed across Syria amid Demos Under Fire in Aleppo, Damascus

Syrian security forces on Friday killed 75 people across the country and opened fire to disperse demonstrations in the cities of Aleppo and Damascus as thousands took to the streets, activists and monitors said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said among the victims were several children, two women and 14 summarily executed in the flashpoint Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr.

Thirty-four people were killed in Homs province, 11 in the northwestern province of Idlib, eight in the northern province of Aleppo, nine in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, nine in the central province of Hama, two in the Damascus suburb of Douma, one in the coastal province of Latakia and one in the southern province of Daraa, the LCC said.

The northern city of Aleppo was the scene of 12 protests, with demonstrators chanting support for Homs and other areas besieged by regime forces, according to local activist Mohammed al-Halabi.

"Hundreds were taking part several demonstrations in the Halab al-Jadida district, while thousands demonstrated in other areas such as Salah el-Din, Fardoss and Marjeh," he told Agence France Presse.

He said security forces fired live rounds at protesters in Salah el-Din and Saif a-Dawla neighborhoods, where several people were wounded and others arrested.

Five demonstrators were shot and wounded as security forces fired to disperse a protest outside Salam mosque in the Barzeh area of Damascus, after weekly Muslim prayers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Activist Mohammed al-Shami told AFP that thousands of demonstrators turned out in several areas of the capital and its suburbs, such as Mazzeh, Hajar al-Aswad, al-Aasali, Douma, Qadam, Qaboon and Kfar Sousa.

'We shall not abandon Homs. We shall not abandon Daraa," protesters chanted in a video posted online, hailing the main centers of dissent against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Meanwhile, a Red Cross relief convoy was poised to enter the battered Baba Amr neighborhood of the city of Homs, a day after regime forces overran it, ending a nearly four-week pounding.

More than 20,000 civilians are believed to have been trapped in the district through the prolonged bombardment with a lone doctor reported to be tending to the scores of casualties in a single makeshift clinic.

As rebel fighters pulled out on Thursday in the face of the regime's overwhelmingly superior fire power, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) warned of "barbaric" reprisals against the neighborhood’s residents.

The U.N. rights body appealed to Syria to respect international law after receiving unconfirmed reports of 17 "grisly" executions as regime forces took control of Baba Amr.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the OHCHR had received information "suggesting a particularly grisly set of summary executions" on Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said another 10 people were shot dead in Baba Amr on Friday, but its head, Rami Abdul Rahman, added: "The circumstances of their deaths are not clear."

France announced it was closing its embassy in Damascus, mirroring similar moves by Britain and the United States.

"What is going on is scandalous, there are more than 8,000 dead, hundreds of children, and the city of Homs faces the risk of being wiped off the map," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the close of an EU summit.

A first International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent relief convoy was poised to enter Baba Amr with seven truck loads of desperately needed supplies, an ICRC spokesman said.

"We are preparing to enter the district of Baba Amr," deputy ICRC spokesman Sebastien Carliez said in Geneva.

The Observatory urged the ICRC to use the access to the neighborhood to inspect a shopping center it said was being used by regime forces as a makeshift detention center.

The rebels said they had pulled out "tactically" from Baba Amr on Thursday, the second day of an all-out ground assault by the feared Fourth Armored Division led by President Bashar al-Assad's younger brother Maher.

The storming of the rebel bastion began early Wednesday, following 27 straight days of relentless shelling that has made the neighborhood an icon of the more than 11-month uprising against Assad's regime.

Other parts of Homs, including the Khaldiyeh, Bayyada, Bab Sbaa and Hamidiyeh neighborhoods, remain in the hands of the "terrorists" and still have to be "dealt with," a security source in Damascus told AFP.

Activists called for nationwide protests on Friday to demand the arming of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) to give it the fire power to defend itself against regime forces.

"Assad, don't delude yourself, there are a thousand and one Baba Amrs," the activists said on their "Syrian Revolution 2011" Facebook page.

"Soon, we'll be back even stronger," it added, next to a picture of rebel fighters.

The SNC announced on Thursday that it was forming a military bureau to coordinate the flow of arms to the rebels after calls from Gulf Arab states for weapons deliveries ran into opposition from Washington, which said it feared al-Qaida might exploit the situation.

Two French journalists, trapped for days in the bombardment of Baba Amr, were headed home in a hospital plane after being brought out to safety in Lebanon on Thursday, the French embassy in Beirut said.

Syrian authorities, meanwhile, said they located the bodies of U.S. journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik in Baba Amr after the rebels retreated. The journalists were killed in the same rocket attack.

The FSA's Al-Farouk Brigade said a number of its fighters were killed or wounded evacuating foreign journalists from Homs.

In Brussels, EU leaders "horrified" by the atrocities taking place in Syria called for those responsible to be held to account.

EU president Herman Van Rompuy said at the close of the two-day gathering that the 27 EU leaders had adopted a text stating that "the European Council remains determined to ensure that those responsible for atrocities in Syria are held accountable for their actions".

"We are horrified by the atrocities that have been committed and are still being committed," Van Rompuy said.

As pressure mounted on key Damascus ally Moscow to harden its stance against Assad's regime, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in talks with foreign news executives late Thursday rejected the idea that Russia was taking sides in what he described as an "armed civilian conflict."

"Our aim is not to help one of the sides -- not the Syrian authorities nor the armed opposition -- but to obtain an all-round reconciliation," he said in comments published on the government website Friday.

"We have no special relationship with Syria," he added.

Both Russia and China backed a U.N. Security Council statement on Thursday calling on Syria to allow "immediate" humanitarian access to protest cities, after vetoing two resolutions on the conflict last October and again in February.