In Sometimes Deadly Clashes, Defiant Syrians Protest

CAIRO — Rejecting the Syrian president’s latest effort to mollify them, thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities and towns across Syria on Sunday, using a national holiday commemorating the end of French colonialism to widen their challenge to his family’s iron-fisted autocracy. Security officers responded with deadly force, witnesses reported, including live ammunition fired at a funeral and the seizure of critically wounded demonstrators from a hospital.

The protests on Sunday amounted to a brazen dismissal of the steps outlined by the president, Bashar al-Assad, only a day earlier in a televised address, notably the lifting of the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency before the end of this week. The protests have posed an unprecedented challenge to the rule of Mr. Assad, who has clearly been shaken by the upheavals that have felled longstanding governments in Tunisia and Egypt and are threatening those in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya.

The Syrian protests coincided with new disclosures that the United States began in 2005 to secretly finance some Syrian opposition groups intent on toppling Mr. Assad. The disclosures, in diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, showed State Department financing for Barada TV, an anti-Assad satellite broadcaster run by Syrian exiles in London, as well as concern by American diplomats in Syria that Syrian intelligence agents began to suspect the American financing two years ago.

It was unclear whether the secret financing has since been ended, but an April 2009 cable said a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative was to have distributed $12 million to Syrian projects by September 2010. The existence of the cables was first reported Sunday night on The Washington Post’s Web site.

Mr. Assad has sought to suppress outside reporting on the protests, while his response to the protests themselves has oscillated between dry proposals for reform and deadly violence, and on Sunday it appeared violence was the choice. Clashes between security forces and protesters left at least five dead and dozens injured on the holiday, meant to celebrate the removal of the last French troops from Syria in 1946.

Rights groups estimate that more than 200 people have died in the unrest, which began in mid-March.

The protests on Sunday reflected not only a rejection of Mr. Assad’s reforms, which also included a pledge to tackle unemployment and corruption and a law to permit political parties, but a desire to move beyond a political life dominated by the Assad family since 1971.

“Everyone is shouting against Bashar personally,” said Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link. Among those singled out are Maher al-Assad, a brother who commands the security forces, and Rami Makhlouf, Mr. Assad’s first cousin and a business tycoon widely seen as Syria’s most powerful economic figure.

Protesters chanted, “The people want the overthrow of Bashar!” and borrowed a line from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, who threatened in late February to hunt rebel fighters down house to house: “Zenga zenga, dar dar, we want your head, oh Bashar!”

The worst of the violence on Sunday appeared to be in the central city of Homs and the nearby town of Talbesa.

Two died when security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition on a funeral procession in Talbesa, sending the town into chaos and leaving at least 15 wounded, said a witness and Ms. Zeitouneh. Security forces reportedly arrested a number of severely wounded protesters from the town’s main hospital, she added, raising fears that at least 12 listed in critical condition could die. State news media, reflecting the official version of events, said one policeman was killed and 11 were wounded by rooftop snipers from a “group of armed criminals.”

Live fire also rang through Homs’ central Bab al-Sabe’a district when security forces shot at protesters, killing at least six people, Ms. Zeitouneh said. A witness said that three had died, two from the same family. He spoke over the telephone as the crowd behind him chanted, “With our blood, with our souls, we will redeem you, oh martyrs!”

In the coastal city of Baniyas, witnesses reported, a pro-democracy march by 3,000 women that began Sunday morning had drawn thousands more by nightfall, chanting “God, Syria and freedom” and spray-painting slogans on the pavement urging Mr. Assad to “go out!”

“We need our second independence in Syria,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian rights activist and scholar at George Washington University in Washington. “The first was from the French and the second will be from the Assad dynasty.”