Students in Syria's Aleppo Urge City to Revolt

Hundreds of students in Aleppo, Syria's second city largely spared anti-regime protests and the ensuing crackdown, called on Monday for the city to join the revolt, monitors and activists said.

"Hundreds of students protested Monday against the regime at the University of Aleppo," the country's economic hub, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Protesters at the science and computer science faculties called for the "execution of president" Bashar Assad, according to activists calling themselves "the Union of Free Students in Syria," contacted by Agence France Presse on Skype.

At the department of dentistry, a statue of former president Hafez al-Assad was demolished, they said.

"Aleppo, rise up! Shake the presidential palace," chanted students at the faculty of civil engineering, according to a video posted online whose authenticity could not be confirmed.

"Martyrs, rest in peace, we will continue the fight," students shouted in a hall of the dentistry school, in another video posted by activists.

Dozens of pro-regime gunmen, known as Shabiha, stormed the dentistry department to end a sit-in protest by hundreds of students, the Syrian Observatory said, adding that gunshots were fired and 16 students detained.

More than 7,600 have been killed since protests broke out in Syria in March 2011, according to monitors.