Syrian tanks opened fire on poor Sunni districts in Latakia today, residents said, on the fourth day of a military assault on the northern port city aimed at crushing protests demanding an end to 41 years of Assad family rule.
President Bashar al-Assad, from Syria's minority Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam, has broadened and intensified a military assault against towns and cities where demonstrators have been demanding his removal since the middle of March.
"Heavy machinegun fire and explosions were hitting al-Raml al-Filistini [home to Palestinian refugees] and al-Shaab this morning. This subsided and now there is the sound of intermittent tank fire," one of the residents, who lives near the two districts of Latakia, told Reuters by telephone.
The Syrian assault on the Palestinian refugee camp amounts to a crime against humanity, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation said.
"The shelling is taking place using gunships and tanks on houses built from tin, on people who have no place to run to or even a shelter to hide in," Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO secretary general, told Reuters. "This is a crime against humanity."
The Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union, a grassroots activists' group, said six people were killed in Latakia yesterday, bringing the civilian death toll there to 34, including a two-year-old girl.
The crackdown coincided with the August 1st start of the Muslim Ramadan fast, when nightly prayers became the occasion for more protests against over four decades of Baathist party rule.
Syrian forces have already stormed Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, the southern city of Deraa and several northwestern towns in a province bordering Turkey.
"The regime seems intent on breaking the bones of the uprising across the country this week, but the people are not backing down. Demonstrations in Deir al-Zor are regaining momentum," one activist in the city said.
The Assads have been repeatedly warned by the United States, European Union and Turkey but the government is signalling to its legion of critics abroad that it will not bow to calls for change that have swept across the Arab world, and to its people that it is prepared to wade through blood to stay in power.
In Deir al-Zor, residents said the army pulled out anti-aircraft guns from the city, but armoured personnel carriers remained at main junctions and troops, accompanied by military intelligence, stormed houses looking for wanted dissidents.
Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Dr Assad to halt such military operations now or face unspecified consequences.
"This is our final word to the Syrian authorities, our first expectation is that these operations stop immediately and unconditionally," Mr Davutoglu said in Turkey's strongest warning yet to its once close ally and neighbour.
Turkish leaders, who have urged Assad to end violence and pursue reforms in Syria, which has a 75 per cent Sunni majority, have grown frustrated. Davutoglu held talks with the Syrian leader in Damascus only last week.
The official state news agency SANA denied Latakia had been shelled from the sea and said two police and four unidentified armed men were killed when security forces pursued "armed men who were terrorising residents . . . and using machineguns and explosives from rooftops and from behind barricades".
Unlike most Syrian cities, which are mainly Sunni, Latakia has a large Alawite population, partly because Assad and his father before him encouraged Alawites to move from their nearby mountain region by offering them cheap land and jobs in the public sector and security apparatus.
Latakia port has played a key role in the Assad family's domination of the economy, with Bashar al-Assad's late uncle Jamil having been in virtual control of the facility, and a new generation of family members and their friends taking over.
Rights groups say at least 12,000 have been detained during the uprising. Thousands of political prisoners were already in jail. Amnesty International says it has listed 1,700 civilians killed since mid-March. Washington has put the toll at 2,000. Damascus says 500 police and soldiers have been killed.
Reuters