Gunfire heard as Syria intensifies crackdown

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Gunfire heard as Syria intensifies crackdown

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The besieged Deir el-Zour came under heavy artillery fire early Monday morning.

08 August,2011 03:34 pm

A besieged Syrian city came under fresh artillery fire early Monday as a deadly military assault left President Bashar Assads regime increasingly isolated, with Arab nations forcefully joining the international chorus of condemnation for the first time.The renewed violence in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour comes a day after at least 42 people were killed there in an intensifying government crackdown on protesters.The Local Coordinating Committees, which help organize the protests and track the uprising, said machine fire and artillery blasts resumed early Monday in Deir el-Zour. Syrian troops also stormed Maaret al-Numan in the northern province of Idlib at dawn, activists said.Forces entered the city from its eastern side and they are preventing the residents from entering or leaving the city, the LCC said in a statement.More than 300 people have died in the past week, the bloodiest in the five-month uprising against Assads authoritarian rule. Deir el-Zour, in particular, has come under withering attack. The city is in an oil-rich, but largely impoverished region of Syria known for its well-armed clans and tribes whose ties extend across eastern Syrian and into Iraq.Humanitarian conditions in the city are very bad because it has been under siege for nine days, an activist said in the city said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. There is lack of medicine, baby formula, food and gasoline. The city is totally paralyzed.The governments crackdown on mostly peaceful, unarmed protesters demanding political reforms and an end to the Assad familys 40-year rule has left more than 1,700 dead since March, according to activists and human rights groups.Assads regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, which at times has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets.