http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/world/middleeast/05syria.html

August 4, 2011

Civilian Toll Is Mounting in Assault on Syrian City

By NADA BAKRI

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syrian human rights activists said Thursday that Syrian government forces had killed more than 100 people in the rebellious city of Hama in the first 24 hours since seizing control of its central square with armored columns and snipers.

The new toll, which the activists calculated based on reports from people in Hama using satellite phones, doubled the rough count of civilian dead there to more than 200 since the military's tanks began shelling the city over the weekend.

The military's assault on Hama, a linchpin of the five-month-old uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, represents one of the fiercest efforts yet to crush the protesters and is a signal of Mr. Assad's defiance in the face of growing international condemnation. Activists say the overall death toll from the crackdown since March is more than 1,700.

With foreign journalists barred from the country and the government silent about most aspects of the rebellion, activists have been the main source of information about the government crackdown and civilian casualties.

Telephone lines, cellphone and Internet service and electricity and water were cut off two days ago in Hama and have not been restored. Satellite connections offered perhaps the only route left to get information out. Activists said they feared that the near total media blackout on the city would allow the military to pursue an unrestrained assault.

Their fear was deepened by the painful legacy of the government's actions in Hama in 1982, when Mr. Assad's father, Hafez, then the president, crushed an uprising out of the international spotlight, leaving at least 10,000 people dead and parts of the city in ruins.

Other activists spoke of a critical shortage of basic food items and medical equipment. Hama has been surrounded since Sunday. Tanks and snipers seized the central square on Wednesday, and cars trying to carry food into the city have been attacked, according to reports in recent days. Activists said that doctors trying to treat the wounded were being detained.

"What are they going to do next? Bomb Syrian cities and towns with warplanes?" said Louay Hussein, a prominent opposition figure in Syria. "This is an enemy of the country. It is not a government anymore."

Saleh al-Hamawi, an activist with the Local Coordination Committees, a group that helps organize and document protests, said via a satellite phone from Hama that the shelling of the city had begun in the early hours of Thursday and that it had been sporadic since then.

"We are facing a food and medical equipment crisis," Mr. Hamawi said. "We don't have flour or vegetables. People are borrowing food from their neighbors."

He said that residents were unable to leave their neighborhoods because of the sniper fire and that two women bled to death in front of him because they could not be safely taken to a hospital.

Mr. Hamawi said that a soldier near his house told him that the military was just responding to gunfire coming from buildings.

The authorities have blamed a foreign conspiracy for the unrest; they said they were battling Muslim extremists who were "terrorizing" Syrian citizens.

On Sunday, when the president ordered the initial attack against Hama, the national news agency, Sana, said it was a military operation against armed fundamentalists.

"The authorities are using excessive force against unarmed peaceful demonstrators," said Mohammad Habash, a Syrian lawmaker in Damascus. "This military interference is unnecessary."

Another resident in Hama who gave his name as Fadi, also reached via satellite phone, said that most women and children had fled the city to a nearby town, Al-Zahiriyah, where they set up a makeshift camp for displaced families. "The situation is very difficult," Mr. Fadi said. "I am witnessing massacres. People are dying from their wounds, inside their homes, because we can't take them to hospitals."

He said that he had heard from residents that in one neighborhood, Al-Alamayn, 30 people had died since Wednesday. Mr. Fadi said the information was hard to confirm because snipers loyal to the government were shooting at anything that moved.

Avaaz, a human rights group that has tried to document the Syrian uprising, said that at least 109 people had been killed since Wednesday in Hama alone, and six elsewhere in Syria. The Local Coordination Committees put the death toll on Wednesday at 30. Activists also said that residents were burying the dead in public parks because they could not reach cemeteries.

According to Avaaz, at least 2,800 people have been reported missing since mid-March. Mr. Hussein, the opposition figure, said that the authorities denied that the missing people had been detained, raising fears that some of them have been killed.

Mr. Hussein, himself a former prisoner, said that the government was believed to have turned public buildings into camps to accommodate the numbers of detainees.

A Thursday morning post on the official Syrian Revolution Facebook page said that heavy gunfire could be heard across Hama and that armed men loyal to the government had occupied private hospitals. Snipers, it said, took positions on the hospitals' rooftops. It also said that hospitals were suffering shortages of basic supplies, including fuel for generators, which are needed when the electricity is shut off.

Syria's state-run media has conspicuously avoided mention of the Hama siege, focusing instead on news that suggests that all is normal in the country and what the media outlets have described as Mr. Assad's noble attempts to promote political dialogue and openness. The top story Thursday on Sana's English-language Web site was about Mr. Assad's endorsement of a draft law allowing multiple political parties. Syria's political opposition denounced the law as a joke when it was announced last month.

Mr. Assad's endorsement of the law only seemed to add to the international outrage over the repression. France called it a "provocation."

In a further sign of Mr. Assad's deepening isolation abroad, the president of Russia -- a close ally of Syria's -- criticized him in unusually blunt terms. The remarks by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, in an interview with Russian radio and television stations, came a day after Russia joined with other members of the United Nations Security Council in rebuking Mr. Assad for the repression.

"He needs to urgently carry out reforms, reconcile with the opposition, restore peace and set up a modern state," Mr. Medvedev said. "If he fails to do this, he will face a sad fate."

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York.