Amman - A man shot by gunmen loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this week died of his wounds on Saturday, a rights group said, adding to tension in the coastal city of Banias where the army was deployed to contain protests.
Osama al-Sheikha, 40, was among a group of men, some carrying sticks, guarding a mosque in Banias on Sunday after mass protests against Assad's 11-year rule. Loyalists, known as “al-shabbiha”, fired at them with AK-47 rifles from speeding cars, witnesses said.
Some mourners at his funeral on Saturday chanted “freedom, freedom ... the murderers must be held accountable,” witnesses said. His funeral was being held at the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq mosque, which he was guarding when he was shot.
His death added to the tense atmosphere in Banias, which has also witnessed sectarian tension between its majority Sunni population and Alawite residents following the demonstrations.
Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, a secretive offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has said mass pro-democracy protests that erupted in the southern city of Deraa more than a month ago and spread across large parts of Syria were a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife.
But the warning - Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, used similar language when he crushed a leftist and Islamist challenge to his iron rule in the 1980s - has failed to quell the tide of protests.
The demonstrations swept into the capital Damascus on Friday for the first time. Thousands of protesters marched elsewhere in the country despite a crackdown and vague political concessions announced by Assad in an attempt to quell the unrest.
Shouting “God, Syria, Freedom”, protesters repeated the same demand for democratic reform and freedoms across many cities.
PATTERN OF DEFIANCE
In Damascus, security forces used batons and teargas to prevent thousands of protesters marching from several suburbs from reaching the main Abbasside Square.
“I counted 15 mukhabarat (secret police) bus loads,” one witness said. “They went into the alleyways just north of the square chasing protesters and yelling 'You pimps, you infiltrators, you want freedom? We will give it to you'.”
As the protests entered their fifth week, the biggest and most bloody have taken place after Friday prayers, often in defiance of concessions announced by authorities the day before.
Al-Jazeera television channel aired footage on Friday showing Syrian security forces beating with sticks, kicking and walking over detained protesters in the coastal city of Baida. It said the pictures were shot several days ago.
Baida and Banias have kept up defiance against Assad despite the deployment of the army, secret police and Assad's loyalist gunmen.
Shiekha was the father of two boys and two girls. He worked at the Banias oil refinery, one of two in Syria.His death brings to five the number of civilians killed in Banias since the protests began, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent organisation.
A deal was reached last week under which the army patrolled Banias in exchange for freeing people detained by security forces in the city and not harming residents.
A source in the city said the deal was not going smoothly, with residents opposing army deployment in a square that has been the main sites of the protests.
An estimated 200 people have been killed during the demonstrations, mostly when security forces attacked protesters, according to rights campaigners.
The authorities said unspecified armed groups and “infiltrators” were responsible for the violence and police and soldiers have also been killed, including a policeman in the central city of Homs on Friday. - Reuters