Syria Troops Shell Homs after Night Demos

Syrian troops shelled Khaldiyeh district in the flashpoint city of Homs early Monday after a night of nationwide protests against the regime, activists and monitors said.

Khaldiyeh, targeted in a week-long campaign to flush out regime opponents, was hit by mortar rounds that set alight houses in the neighborhood, said the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) activist group.

Five people were seriously wounded in the onslaught on the district, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

In the eastern hot spot of Deir al-Zour, security forces carried out dawn raids in which 16 people were arrested, the LCC said in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

Gunshots were heard as they conducted a similar operation in the town of Saraqeb, in the northwestern province of Idlib, according to activists on the ground.

Raids were also staged in villages of southern Daraa province, cradle of a year-old popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad which has spread across the country.

Monitors say that more than 9,100 people have been killed since the revolt broke out in mid-March last year.

The latest security operations came after a night of protests against the Assad regime.

In the central city of Hama, many marched through several neighborhoods late Sunday night to denounce the raids carried out during the day by troops in search of regime opponents, activists reported.

In the countryside, the military shelled the Hama provincial town of Qalaat al-Madiq, with numerous residents taking flight from the assault as well as a worsening humanitarian situation.

Demonstrations were also held in and around Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, in support of the rebel Free Syrian Army and demanding the fall of the Assad regime.