Syrian Govt Approves Lifting Decades-Old Emergency Law

Syria's government approved on Tuesday a bill to rescind a decades-old emergency law and agreed to abolish the state security court, after weeks of pro-democracy protests and hundreds of deaths.

The cabinet also approved a bill regulating demonstrations, the official news agency SANA reported, only hours after the interior minister imposed a total ban on political gatherings and after security forces fired on protesters in the city of Homs, killing four.

The laws will now go before parliament, which is not due to meet before May 2.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar earlier told Syrians "to refrain from taking part in all marches, demonstrations or sit-ins under any banner whatsoever."

He warned that if demonstrations were held, "the laws in force in Syria will be applied in the interest of the safety of the people and the stability of the country."

With protests intensifying and spreading across the country, President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday delivered a speech to the new cabinet in which he promised an end to the draconian emergency law, in force since 1963.

The law restricts many civil liberties, including public gatherings and freedom of movement, and allows the "arrest of anyone suspected of posing a threat to security."

There was no immediate response from protest leaders, who have previously said the lifting of the state of emergency would not go far enough and have demanded an end to the Baath party's stranglehold on Syrian politics.

Repeal of the emergency law has been a central demand of reformists since protests began on March 15.

At least 200 people have been killed by security forces or plain-clothes police since the start of the protest movement, according to Amnesty International.

Violence continued on Tuesday, with at least 10 people reported killed in clashes in the central city of Homs, where some 20,000 people staged a sit-in protest overnight demanding the fall of Assad's regime.

At the outset, the authorities relaxed enforcement of the emergency law to permit peaceful gatherings but quickly started clamping down.

In his Saturday speech, Assad said demonstrations are "allowed by the Syrian constitution" but that "there is no law in place to regulate them" and that "police must first be trained and equipped to handle them.

"The role of police is to protect demonstrators as well as public and private goods from all acts of sabotage, for which there will be no tolerance because people reject anarchy," he added.

Meanwhile, the authorities vowed to suppress what they called an "armed revolt" by Salafists, Muslims who espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices common in the early days of the faith.

"The latest incidents have shown that ... armed Salafist groups, particularly in the cities of Homs and Banias, have openly called for armed revolt," SANA quoted the interior ministry as saying.

The ministry accused such groups of killing soldiers, policemen and civilians, and of attacking public and private property, and warned that "their terrorist activities will not be tolerated".

The authorities said on Tuesday three army officers and three children were killed around the city of Homs.

"Armed criminal gangs who block roads and spread fear in the area, came upon General Abdo Khodr al-Tellawi, his two children and his nephew, and killed them in cold blood" and "mutilated" the bodies, state news agency SANA reported.

Two other officers "fell as martyrs to armed criminal gangs' bullets in Homs", and General Mohammed Abdo Khaddour was shot in the head and chest as he traveled to his office there, the agency said.

An activist reached by telephone told Agence France Presse a protest overnight in Homs "was dispersed with force. There was heavy gunfire."

Another activist said four people were killed during the assault by security forces, but gave no details.

The main centers of unrest have been the agricultural province of Daraa in the south, the major towns of Latakia, Banias and Homs, as well as the Damascus suburbs, and has now spread further to the majority Kurdish regions in the north and for the first time to the Druze stronghold of Suwaida. Only Damascus and Aleppo have so far been spared.

Analysts said that at the outset, the slogans were all about calls for reform and the liberalization of a regime which has been in power for half-a-century, but the order of the day more recently has been the fall of the regime itself.