AMMAN (World News) - Syrian forces shot dead 12 people on Friday and deployed heavily across rural areas around Damascus to try to thwart protests against President Bashar al-Assad which have shaken the country for six months.
Despite the deployment, activists reported demonstrations on the outer edges of the capital, the northern province of Idlib bordering Turkey and other parts of Syria, waving banners declaring they were "on course to bring down the regime."
After storming several cities in August to crush protest centres, the Syrian army has swept through rural districts in recent weeks, hunting down activists and army defectors, carrying out widespread arrests and killing dozens of people.
State television broadcast an interview on Thursday night with one of the most prominent military deserters, appearing to recant claims made when he defected and saying he had never been ordered to fire on protesters.
It was not clear how Lieutenant-Colonel Hussein Harmoush, who announced his desertion in June, ended up back in Damascus. Turkey's foreign ministry d enied reports it had handed him over to Syrian authorities, saying it would be out of the question to return anyone against their will.
The operations in the north have led to renewed refugee flows into Turkey, Turkish officials say, and on Thursday night Syrian forces crossed 200 meters into Lebanese territory in pursuit of fugitives, according to the Lebanese army. Lebanese sources said a Lebanese man was wounded in gunfire.
Activists said most of Friday's killings occurred in the countryside around the city of Hama and in Jabal al-Zawiya, a rugged region near Turkey, both scenes of military operations in the last week.
Protesters were also killed on the edge of Damascus, including a 12-year-old boy, and in Homs, 165 km (100 miles) to the north, the activists said.
OFFENSIVE NEAR HAMA
The Un ited Nations says 2,600 people have been killed in Assad's crackdown on protests which broke out six months ago, inspired by uprisings in North Africa which had overthrown leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and have now also ended the rule of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
Syrian authorities say 1,400 people have been killed, half of them soldiers and police, in unrest which they blame on armed gangs backed by foreign powers.
The Syrian state news agency SANA said on Friday that a law enforcement officer was killed and four others injured in the southern province of Deraa when they were "fired at by armed groups."
Most foreign media have been barred from operating in Syria making it hard to verify reports from activists and authorities.
Assad has promised reform including a multi-party parliamentary election by February, but has not said whether he would accept any challenge for his own position when his presidential term expires in 2014.
The relentless repression of dissent has triggered U.S. and European sanctions and calls for Assad to step down, but Washington and its Western allies have failed to persuade Russia and China to endorse a tough United Nations response.
The Arab League and neighboring Turkey have called for an immediate end to the bloodshed. However, they have not spelled out any punitive action Assad might face, and no country is proposing the kind of NATO intervention which toppled Gaddafi.
Syrian troops began a big offensive last week in the countryside around Hama, which was one of the cities hit hardest by a military offensive which Assad launched in August during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
On Friday, they stormed a town near Hama, hunting for defectors, a local activist said. "They raided Hilfaya at 6:30 a.m. with troops and security police descending from buses and trucks equipped with machineguns," he told World News by telephone.
"They stayed for two hours, firing at random to frighten the inhabitants. Among the six who were killed were two cousins from the al-Jammal family who were on their way to Hilfaya from the nearby village of Taybeh," the activist said.
"Bashar, you butcher," read a banner in Kiswa, just south of Damascus, where one protester waved an old Syrian flag dating back to the era before Assad's Baath Party seized power nearly 50 years ago.
Assad, from the minority Alawite sect, has ruled majority Sunni Muslim Syria since 2000 when he succeeded his father Hafez al-Assad.
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