Syria troops fire on protesters, killing 8

Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters in several parts of the country on Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding scores, while masked gunmen burst into an apartment in the predominantly Kurdish northeast and shot dead one of Syrias most prominent opposition figures.Another leading opposition figure was beaten up by pro-government gunmen and rushed to a hospital in Damascus, activists said.The slaying of Mashaal Tammo, a 53-year-old former political prisoner and a spokesman for the Kurdish Future Party, was the latest in a string of targeted killings in Syria as the country slides further into disorder, seven months into the uprising against President Bashar Assad.Tammo, killed by unknown gunmen in the city of Qamishli, was also a member of the executive committee of the newly formed Syrian National Council, a broad-based front bringing together opposition figures inside and outside the country in an attempt to unify the deeply fragmented dissident movement.Tammos son and another member of the Kurdish Future Party were wounded in the attack, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for an activist group called the Local Coordination Committees.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least four people were killed and 25 were wounded in the central city of Homs, Syrias third largest city. It also reported intense shooting in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour near the border with Iraq, and the Damascus suburb of Douma.In Douma, the Observatory said at least three people were killed and several were wounded, while five were wounded in the northern town of Maaret al-Numan.Osso said one person was also killed in the town of Zabadani near the border with Lebanon.Meanwhile, Riad Seif, a former lawmaker who became a leading opposition figure and outspoken critic of Assads regime, was beaten up outside a mosque in the central Damascus suburb of Midan, according to two Syria-based activists.Seif, who suffers from cancer and had been detained earlier this year, was rushed to hospital after the beating, said Osso and Idilbi. Amateur video posted on the Internet showed Seif at the hospital, with bruises to his back and hands.In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland lamented the absolutely gruesome online footage of Seif being attacked, and the separate shooting that claimed the life of Tammo.