BEIRUT – protests exploded in at least three part of Syria on Friday in the most serious unrest this year in one of the most repressive States, Middle East, according to accounts from governmental tv, witnesses and social media.
The Government's television station and news agency said the "infiltrators" in the southern town of Deraa caused "chaos and riots" and smashed cars and public and private property before they attacked riot police who chased them away. It said a similar demonstration in the coastal town of Banyas dispersed without incident.
Amateur video recordings posted on YouTube and Twitter showed large groups of protesters in several cities, but its authenticity could not immediately be confirmed independently.
Serious disturbances in Syria would be a great expansion of the wave of unrest is tearing through the Arab world for more than a month in the wake of the pro-democracy uprisings that overthrew the autocratic leaders in Tunisia and Egypt. Syria, a predominantly Sunni country ruled by minority Alawites, has a history of brutally crushing dissent — including a notorious incident that President Hafez Assad crushed a Muslim fundamentalist uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, killing thousands.
An amateur video posted Friday showed what appeared to be Show Syrian Government trucks spraying water on the Chileans. Two other purposes to show several thousand men gathering in Banyas and the city of Homs.
A YouTube video claiming to be shot in Banyas showed several thousand demonstrators gathering around an old stone building with a Syrian flag fluttering from its roof. A cluster of men stood on his balcony with a speaker. In the middle of the fair "Freedom!" and "there is only one God!" cried a man a list of protesters requirements — ranging from freedom of expression to allow Muslim women with face veil to school.
In the capital, plainclothes security officers strongly scattered about a dozen protesters are calling for more freedoms in the country, said human rights activists earlier in the day.
The activists said the protest occurred the famous Umayyad mosque Damascus Yard shortly after Friday prayers. At least two demonstrators were detained, they said.
The protest was the third small rally broken up in Damascus this week.
Assad's death in 2000 after three decades of authoritarian rule raised hope a freer society under his British-educated son and successor, Bashar. Political institutions in which political and economic issues were discussed openly jumped across the country.
But the "Damascus Spring" as it came to be known was short-lived. In 2001, began secret police raiding institutions, detention two legislators and dozens of other activists in the following years.
In 2004, forces bloody clashes, which began in the northeastern city of Qamishli between Syrian Kurds and security left at least 25 people died and some 100 wounded.
On Friday, said eight Syrian human rights groups also a Prosecutor had questioned and charged with dozens of demonstrators hurt the State's image.
The groups said the 32 activists denied the charges. They included four relatives of political prisoner Kamal Labawani, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence.
The activists were detained Wednesday when plainclothes security officers armed with sales incentive dispersed a protest near the Interior Ministry to demand the release of political prisoners.
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Diaa Hadid and Zeina Karam in Cairo contributed to this report.
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