Syrian forces storm border town near Turkey - World news on msnbc.com
‘Security grip weakening’
Tens of thousands rallied across Syria on Friday, defying Assad’s repression and ignoring a pledge that his tycoon cousin Rami Makhlouf, a symbol of corruption among the elite, would renounce his business empire and channel his wealth to charity.Witnesses and activists said people rallied in the southern province of Deraa where the revolt began, as well as in the Kurdish northeast, the province of Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq’s Sunni heartland, the city of Hama north of Damascus, the Mediterranean coast and suburbs of the capital itself.
“The security grip is weakening because the protests are growing in numbers and spreading. More people are risking their lives to demonstrate. The Syrian people realize that this is an opportunity for liberty that comes once in hundreds of years,” opposition figure Walid al-Bunni told Reuters from Damascus.
The worst bloodshed on Friday was in Homs, a merchant city of 1 million people in central Syria, where the Local Coordination Committees, a main activist group linked to protesters, said 10 demonstrators were killed.
First protest-tied death in Aleppo, too, in the neigborhoods we visited.
