SYRIA: Graphic footage surfaces after Daraa clashes

Graphic footage posted online and claiming to depict Wednesday's lethal crackdown in the southern Syrian city of Daraa appears to show streets littered with the bodies of protesters who have been shot, some of them apparently by unconventional ammunition.

The video linked here is too graphic to be posted on Babylon & Beyond, but it appears to show the bodies of several protesters -- some of whom were shot in the head -- lying in the street.

Another video was posted on Twitter and claims to show a man wounded by anti-tank ammunition. The gaping hole in his arm appears larger than what would be inflicted by normal bullets.

Reuters cited hospital sources saying at least 25 people were killed Wednesday when security forces raided a Daraa mosque where protesters were taking refuge in an effort to squash the protest movement.

Anti-government protests around Syria have been called for Friday.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Comments

[Jehudah Ben-Israel]

In 1982 al-Assad the father slaughter between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians in Hamah, Syria.

How many does al-Assad the son planing to kill, in addition to the hundreds already reported dead at the hands of the Syrian and Hizballah forces?

And, for how long the international community, including the Arab world, is going to keep silent, as it did when al-Assad the father conducted his act of butchery...??!!

[YJ Draiman for Mayor of Los Angeles 2013]

IN FEBRUARY 1982, the Syrian dictatorship headed by Hafez al-Assad responded to an uprising in the city of Hama with extraordinary violence. The town was indiscriminately bombarded by tanks and artillery; security forces then swept through the rubble and massacred the survivors. Estimates of the final death toll ranged from 10,000 to 40,000 or more. Hama became a symbol in the Arab world of what its authoritarian regimes were prepared to do to keep themselves in power.

Now the Arab uprising of 2011 has reached Syria, and Assad’s son, Bashar, is trying to apply his father’s solution.