BEIRUT — In widespread, unyielding defiance of President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime, protests erupted throughout Syria after noontime prayers Friday, with hundreds of thousands gathering in Hama and large demonstrations in Dair Azour, according to witnesses, activists and video footage.
Protesters, at times faced with gunfire, tear gas or beatings, stridently demanded the end of a government whose descent has sent refugees across borders and sharpened political and sectarian animosities throughout the Middle East.
At least five people were reported killed as security forces confronted the demonstrators, two of them in the country’s second largest city of Aleppo, a commercial and cultural center whose relative quiet has long been seen as a pillar of middle-class support for Assad, activists said.
Security forces fired their weapons at demonstrators, especially in the central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, and nearby Aleppo, where plainclothes and uniformed security forces beat worshippers in a mosque in an attack captured in amateur video footage.
“Security forces stormed the Amena mosque and began beating people recklessly and arrested a lot of people,” said Mahmoud, a 34-year-old accountant in Aleppo who declined to give his last name. “I saw one person on the ground being beaten by more than 10 people. I think he lost his life.”
Though protests broke out in the suburbs of Damascus, activists said the capital was relatively quiet. A witness in the Damascus suburb of Barzeh described a huge presence of the security forces closing off roads in and out of the country’s largest metropolitan area.
Hama and Aleppo, both potentially volatile religious mosaics of Sunnis, Shiite denominations and Christians, were epicenters of a 1982 rebellion against the Assad family’s decades-long rule.
The latest uptick in violence in the 4-month-old popular uprising against the regime — activists estimate more than 2,000 people have been killed — comes about a week before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when the faithful gather twice daily for group prayers.
Syrian security forces seem to be gearing up for a confrontation, especially in Homs, where the apparent abduction and killing of several members of Assad’s minority Allawite Muslim community last week led to an all-out military assault, with tank or artillery shells being fired at Sunni mosque minarets and residential districts, according to footage posted to the Internet.
Dozens have been killed over the last week in what activists and observers describe as a cynical attempt by Assad to recast the anti-government protests as a sectarian war between Sunnis and Allawites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot.
“That is what the regime wants everyone to believe so they become afraid,” said a Western diplomat in Damascus, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And that is the challenge for the opposition — they have to opt out of fearful propaganda and show that they are unified.”
The loose collection of protest leaders, who have cast each Friday of protests with a theme, called the current outbreak of civil disobedience the day of “The Descendants of Khaled,” a seventh-century disciple of the prophet Muhammad who unified the Arabian Peninsula and was buried in Homs. The symbolism was aimed at fusing the country’s nationalist and religious sentiments to the aspi rations of the protest movement, as well as emphasizing the long-espoused theme of national unity in the face of potential sectarian strife.
“One flag, one people, one country,” said a banner in Dair Azour, once a bastion of regime support near the Iraqi border.
A man reached at home in Homs via satellite phone said he could hear sporadic gunfire. He asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Authorities have begun aggressively targeting activists who provide information to independent media.
Another witness west of Homs, who gave his name as Hassan, said the army was deploying along the Lebanese-Syrian border and that there was heavy gunfire in Homs.
“Large squads of mukhabarat (Syrian intelligence) and shabiba (pro-government militiamen) are roaming the streets inside the city,” he said. “The Syrian army is deploying on the border. There are tanks and army members on some rooftops in villages near the border. They’re worried about demonstrations and want to make sure that those injured in protests are not brought over the Lebanes e border.”