Syrian troops detained scores of people in Damascus and the coastal city of Latakia in overnight raids as President Bashar Assad's regime tried to forcefully end a five-month uprising, activists said Wednesday. Assad dramatically escalated his crackdown on the five-month-old uprising since the start of Ramazan, killing hundreds and detaining thousands.
Despite broad international condemnation most recently from neighbouring Turkey and Jordan the regime has unleashed tanks, ground troops and snipers in an attempt to retake control in rebellious areas. In Latakia, a Mediterranean port city that has been subjected to a four-day military assault, security centres were overflowing with detainees, forcing authorities to hold hundreds of other prisoners in the city's main football stadium and a movie theatre, said Rami Abdul-Raham, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"Detentions centres are packed," he said. A woman in Latakia died of her wounds Wednesday, two days after she was injured, according to the observatory and The Local Co-ordination Committees, another activist group. The LCC said a man was killed in the city late Tuesday.
In the north-western Idlib province, a bullet killed a man as he stood on his balcony, according to observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of people on the ground. Troops were carrying out raids in the area at the time.