AppId is over the quota
Video posted online by Syrian activists on Friday is said to show Arab League monitors in the middle of a large protest in the city of Idlib.
As my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Hwaida Saad report, activists said that the Syrian security forces opened fire on several demonstrations on Friday, killing or injuring protesters in Hama and the Damascus suburb of Douma, despite the presence of Arab League monitors in the country.
Undeterred by the threat of violence, tens of thousands of people appeared to take to the streets across the country intent on showing the monitors the central role played by peaceful protest in the uprising. Video posted online by activists showed monitors in yellow jackets surrounded by vast crowds in the northern city of Idlib.
According to an activist who writes on Twitter as Alexander Page, two brief clips posted on YouTube by a video blogger named Eliasecis showed protesters gathering on Friday outside Hamdan hospital in Douma after an Arab League vehicle was spotted there.
In April, Al Jazeera reported that three doctors, including the private hospital’s director, Dr. Hosam Hamdan, were arrested “because they had disobeyed orders from the secret police to refuse treatment to protesters.”
In a third clip from the same blogger, protesters could be seen surrounding the Arab League monitors as they left the hospital.
Protesters continued to call for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down. But, as Reuters reports, one of the Arab League monitors was caught on live video broadcast by Al Jazeera telling protesters at a mosque in Douma: “Our goal is to observe… it is not to remove the president, our aim is to return Syria to peace and security.”
Ahmed Al Omran, a Saudi journalist with NPR who sifts through Syrian protest video on his Twitter feed, notes that this graphic clip is said to show the bloody face of a young man activists said was shot in Douma on Friday.
The same journalist pointed to this video, said to have been recorded in Douma on Friday as the activist behind the camera was shot by the security forces.
On Thursday, Mr. Omran reported on the death of another video activist, Basil Al-Sayed, who was reportedly killed in the city of Homs on Wednesday while filming an assault by the security forces.
Video posted online by an activist in Homs on Friday showed residents sharing their accounts of the security crackdown with one of the monitors.
In another encounter with monitors, said to have been recorded on Friday in the devastated neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs, Mr. Omran points out that protesters could be heard chanting: “No dialogue with Bashar!”
Another activist uploaded this clip of a boisterous, antigovernment demonstration in Homs, which has been one of the most active centers of dissent since the uprising began.
Borzou Daragahi, a Financial Times correspondent, observed that some of the protesters “were shown dressed in long white shrouds, symbolizing their readiness for martyrdom, and waving Islamic flags.”
The activist Sham News Network channel on YouTube featured video of what looked to be an even larger demonstration in the Deir Baalba neighborhood of Homs on Friday.
According to Mr. Daragahi, protesters in Deir Baalba mocked a statement by the Sudanese head of the observer mission, Lt. Gen. Mohamed al-Dabi, who called conditions in the city “reassuring.” Mr. Daragahi reported that the protesters in turn reminded the world that General Dabi was the chief of a military intelligence branch in Sudan that has been accused of atrocities, displaying a sign that read: “Homs is fine? And Darfur is fine as well?”
Activists also documented protests and confrontations across Syria on Friday. This video of a clash between protesters and the security forces was said to have been filmed in Dara’a, the southern city where the uprising began in March.
According to Mr. Omran, in this video clip, one of the Arab League observers in Dara’a explained that he had seen government snipers in the city and called on the authorities to remove them.
Protesters also reportedly took to the streets of the city of Hama, where an uprising in 1982 was brutally crushed by Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father. Near the end of this video of a rally in Hama, one of the protesters waves a sign that compared the health risks of living under the rule of Mr. Assad to the danger posed by smoking.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 30, 2011
An earlier version of this post misstated the name of a New York Times reporter writing about the protests in Syria. He is Kareem Fahim.
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