Syrian Army Mobilizes in Banias

Syrian troops encircled the flashpoint coastal town of Banias Monday, where weekend shootings left 13 dead and scores wounded, a human rights activist said.

"Seventeen tanks were deployed" to Banias, the activist told Agence France Presse, adding that the army had surrounded the northwestern city and electricity had been cut off.

"The army is shooting sporadically to provoke people but not a single demonstrator has fired. There are calls from the minarets of the mosques asking the army to stop its fire," he said.

The rights activist added that three soldiers had tried to defect and join the demonstrators, after refusing to fire at them, but superior officers opened fire, wounding the soldiers.

"(President) Bashar al-Assad is sending us a message: punish those who dare demand freedom with death," a university professor told AFP by telephone.

Syrian government forces on Sunday killed at least four people and wounded 17 when they strafed a residential area of the town with gunfire for hours, witnesses said.

Nine soldiers, including two officers, were later killed and several wounded when their patrol was ambushed outside the town, the official SANA news agency said.

Anas al-Shuhri, one of the leaders of the protest movement, told AFP on Monday the "city is besieged by 30 tanks".

"Regime henchmen and security forces deployed in the neighbourhood of al-Qoz, from where they are firing at our neighborhoods. Three of those who died yesterday were killed by sniper fire." he said.

"They also fired on the army to push them to respond against us. There are deaths and injuries among military personnel affected by the firing by security forces and thugs of the regime," he added.

Shuhri accused them of "seeking to stir sectarian unrest".

"We are peaceful demonstrators and we have nothing against Alawites," the minority sect from which President Bashar Al-Assad hails, he said.

Another rights activist, Abdel Karim Rihawi, told AFP that residents of Banias on Monday held funerals for the four people who were killed in the previous day's violence.

"The army was stationed at the city's intersections and residents are cooperating in a positive manner" with soldiers, he said, calling on all parties to "abstain from the use of force".

Rihawi said there were several arrests in Banias overnight, including associates of Syria's former vice-president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a dissident living in exile in Paris since 2006.

"Ahmad Moussa and Mohammad Alaa Bayati were arrested in Banias. These two assistants of Khaddam would have been responsible for organizing protests and armed gangs in the city," he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian human rights organizations demanded an investigation into the bloody Sunday clashes in the city when at least four civilians and nine military were killed.

They called for the creation of a "neutral, transparent and independent investigative committee", in order to "sanction the perpetrators of the violence."

"We firmly denounce all forms of violence, regardless of its origin," said the rights watchdogs in a joint statement. "Protecting the lives of citizens is the state's responsibility."

It also called for "an immediate end to this bloody violence".

The organizations, including the Syrian Organization for Human Rights and the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights, called for the immediate arrest of the perpetrators.

The civilian toll was at least four dead and 17 wounded from shooting by security forces in the neighborhood of Ras al-Nabee, where the Al-Rahman mosque has been a focal point of anti-regime demonstrations.