Syrian troops killed three people as tanks swept into a coastal city on Saturday, activists said, in a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad which drew criticism from an international Muslim group.
The 57-member state Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, adding its voice to growing Arab pressure on Assad, called for an immediate halt to the military campaign against protesters which activists say has killed 1,700 civilians in five months.
Saturday's bloodshed came a day after security forces shot dead 20 people during nation-wide marches in which demonstrators called for Assad's overthrow and vowed defiantly they would "kneel only to God". The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two people were killed and 15 wounded in heavy gunfire after around 20 military vehicles entered the Ramle district of Latakia, on the Mediterranean coast. Soldiers backed by loyalist militia known as shabbiha were also deployed in the city's Sulaiba district, the group's head Rami Abdel Rahman said. "They are arresting dozens of people," he said, adding that many people were fleeing the assault.
Troops and shabbiha killed one person in the town of Qusair, near the Lebanese border, and made arrests in nearby Jousiyah village, he said. The bodies of four people arrested during an assault last week in the Houla Plain north of Homs city were returned to their families, he added. Syria has barred most independent media, making it hard to verify events on the ground in the unrest, one of a series of popular revolts against autocratic Arab leaders this year.
Authorities deny reports of deaths in detention and say 500 soldiers and police have been killed by armed groups they blame for the violence. State news agency SANA said three members of the security forces were killed in Friday's protests.
Since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan in early August, Assad has stepped up the military campaign, launching army assaults on the central city of Hama and the city of Deir al-Zor in the eastern Sunni Muslim tribal heartland. Assad's family, which has ruled Syria for 41 years, is from the minority Alawite sect.
After a wave of Arab criticism of Damascus last week, the Saudi Arabia-based Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) accused Syria on Saturday of using "excessive armed force" and called on Damascus to stop the bloodshed. OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged Assad "to exercise utmost restraint through the immediate halt to the use of force to suppress popular demonstrations".
France's foreign ministry advised citizens against travelling to Syria and urged any French people still in the country to leave using available commercial transport. Its website cited the "aggravation of tensions".