Syrian forces rounded up dozens of people around Hama on Wednesday, a day after shooting dead 22 people, activists said, and Amnesty International said Syria may have committed crimes against humanity in an earlier crackdown.
Tanks were still stationed outside Hama, which has seen some of the biggest protests against President Bashar al-Assad and was the site of a bloody crackdown against Islamist insurgents nearly 30 years ago. But some of the tanks were redeployed away from the city and a resident said security forces were concentrated around the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party, the police headquarters and a state security compound. Most arrests took place in the outskirts of the city.
Ammar Qurabi, Cairo-based head of the Syrian National Human Rights Organisation, said the death toll from Tuesday, when gunmen loyal to Assad swept through the city, had risen to 22. He said hundreds of people had been arrested.
Rami Adbelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 23 people had died in Hama in the last 24 hours, and that an opposition figure in the city had reported water and electricity supplies were cut to the city on Wednesday morning. State news agency SANA said one policeman had been killed in a clash with armed groups who opened fire on security forces and threw petrol and nail bombs at them. It made no mention of civilian deaths but said some "armed men" were injured.
Syria has prevented most independent media from operating inside the country, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and authorities. Hama was emptied of security forces for nearly a month after at least 60 protesters were shot dead on June 3, but the security vacuum emboldened demonstrators and on Friday activists said at least 150,000 people rallied to demand Assad's downfall. The next day Assad sacked the provincial governor and sent tanks and troops to surround the city, signalling a military assault similar to those carried out in other protest centres.
In a report released on Wednesday, Amnesty International said the crackdown two months ago against one of those protest centres - the town of Tel Kelakh near the border with Lebanon - may have constituted a crime against humanity. Urging the United Nations to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court, it said nine people died in custody after being captured during the operation in the town, close to the Lebanese border. Describing a "devastating security operation", it said scores of men were rounded up, and most of them were tortured.
Some detainees told Amnesty they were beaten and tied by the wrists to a bar high enough off the ground to force them to stand on the tip of their toes for long periods - known as the shabah, meaning ghost, position. A 22-year-old man told Amnesty he was tied up in the shabah position had electric shocks applied to his body and testicles during five days of detention in the provincial capital Homs.
"Amnesty International considers that crimes committed in Tel Kelakh amount to crimes against humanity as they appear to be part of a widespread, as well as systematic, attack against the civilian population," it said. Syrian activists say security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians since the unrest erupted 14 weeks ago. Authorities say 500 soldiers and police have been killed by armed gangs who they also blame for most of the civilian deaths.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it had been told by an official at Hama's Hourani hospital that security forces surrounded the hospital on Tuesday, although they did not enter it, as it received the bodies of four people and treated 60 others with gunshot wounds. "Security forces have responded to protest with the brutality that's become familiar over the past several months." said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director.
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