Clashes over the weekend between Syrian soldiers and army defectors and a shooting at a funeral have killed at least 17 members of the military and 14 civilians, the latest sign of the militarization of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, a human rights group said Monday.
Clashes between Syrian troops and army defectors in the country's northwest killed four people Tuesday, while gunmen shot dead a political activist in the latest in a wave of targeted killings in a rebellious central city, activists said.
Syrian security forces searching for anti-government protesters raided houses in central Syria and made arrests, activists and residents said Wednesday.
Masked gunmen dragged Syria's best-known political cartoonist from his car before dawn Thursday, beat him severely and left him bleeding along the side of a road days after he compared Syria's president to Moammar Gadhafi, human rights activists said.
A government owned Syrian newspaper on Saturday rejected U.S. and European calls for President Bashar Assad to step down, saying they revealed the "face of the conspiracy" against Damascus.
Syrian troops detained dozens of people in a Damascus neighborhood 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.
Turkey's prime minister compared Syria's president to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi on Wednesday, as Damascus defied international calls to end the crackdown on a 5-month-old uprising.
Heavy machine-gun fire erupted across the besieged Syrian city of Latakia on Tuesday as the death toll rose to 35 from a military assault now in its fourth day, residents and activists said.
Syrian gunboats firing heavy machine guns pounded impoverished districts of Latakia on Sunday, killing at least 19 people in a renewed assault on the Mediterranean coastal city, activists said.
