Syria rounds up opponents after 120 dead

DAMASCUS: Security forces raided homes across Syria, arresting regime opponents, as funerals were held on Sunday for protesters and mourners killed in a bloody crackdown which activists said cost 120 lives.

Despite a relative lull, security forces killed one more person and wounded several others in the Mediterranean town of Jableh, near the port city of Latakia, a human rights activist said.

He said Sunday's violence broke out after a visit to the town by a new regional governor.

Students, meanwhile, called for a strike and two MPs resigned after bloodshed on Saturday when Syrians swarmed the streets to bury scores of demonstrators killed in protests the previous day.

At least 120 people were killed in the two-day crackdown, the Committee of the Martyrs of the 15 March Revolution said on Sunday. It issued an updated list of names of 95 people it said were killed on Friday in massive protests which swept across Syria. And the death toll for Saturday has risen to 25 people killed by gunfire, it said.

Most of them were killed in the southern protest hub region of Daraa and in and around Damascus, during funerals of people killed on Friday.

Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to probe the "carnage" from the massive "Good Friday" demonstrations and called for sanctions to be slapped on Syrian officials responsible for the killings.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of people were arrested in northern Syria on Friday, just a day after President Bashar al-Assad had lifted decades of emergency rule.

It gave the names of 18 men rounded up in the northern cities of Idlib, Raqqa and Aleppo, but said "dozens more were arrested in other Syrian towns."

Witnesses and activists said several people were also rounded up in and around Damascus, but could not give exact numbers.

The authorities "continue to carry out arbitrary arrests despite the lifting of emergency rule," the Observatory said in a statement.

Police checkpoints have gone up across Damascus, where hotspot neighbourhoods have been locked down and only residents allowed to enter after identity checks, witnesses said.

Thousands of people on Sunday attended the funerals in the southern town of Noa of five of those killed the previous day and later demonstrated without any intervention from the police, an activist said.

The mourners carried banners calling for the abrogation of an article in the constitution designating the Baath party as leader of the state and society, the activist said.

Several weeks of protests have been demanding across-the-board political reforms as well as the dissolution of the feared security services who have cracked down mercilessly against demonstrators.

The Syrian Revolution 2011 group, a driving force behind the protests, indicated its determination to keep up the pressure.(AFP)