Syrian unrest: 'Many deaths' as army attacks Hama
Hama has seen some of the biggest protests yet Syrian tanks have stormed the northern city of Hama, killing at least 45 civilians, a leading rights group says.
Residents reported heavy shelling and warned that hospitals were overflowing with the dead and wounded.The government said that "armed groups" had burnt police stations and vandalised property. Gunmen had killed two Syrian soldiers, it added.
US officials have described the events as "full-on warfare" by the Syrian government against its own people.
The assault was a last act of utter desperation by the Syrian government, JJ Harder, press attache at the American embassy in the capital, Damascus, told the BBC.
With this latest assault, the authorities are sending a clear message that they will not tolerate large-scale unrest ahead of the month of Ramadan, when protests are expected to grow, says the BBC's Lina Sinjab in Damascus.
But our correspondent says the people of Hama remain defiant, with some still out in streets shouting: "We will not be killed again," a reference to the 1982 massacre which left tens of thousands dead after President Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, sent in troops to quell an Islamist uprising there.
The recent protests - calling for widespread democratic reforms and political freedoms - show no sign of letting up despite a government crackdown that has brought international condemnation and sanctions.
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In recent weeks, Hama has slid virtually out of government control, with as many as 500,000 people - the majority of the population - taking to the streets. After ringing the city for the past month, the troops and tanks have gone in to try and tame it.
Hama has taken on almost iconic status, and events there will be followed closely not just in Syria but internationally.
Earlier this month, the US and French ambassadors broke protocol to visit the city and express their solidarity. Washington called for Syrian troops to be pulled back.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been monitoring Syria closely from the outset and urging President Assad to enact serious reforms, has insisted there must not be "another Hama".
He was referring to the 1982 repression in which as many as 30,000 people may have been killed when an Islamist uprising in Hama was ruthlessly put down.
Analysis
Hama has taken on almost iconic status, and events there will be followed closely not just in Syria but internationally.
Earlier this month, the US and French ambassadors broke protocol to visit the city and express their solidarity. Washington called for Syrian troops to be pulled back.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been monitoring Syria closely from the outset and urging President Assad to enact serious reforms, has insisted there must not be "another Hama".
He was referring to the 1982 repression in which as many as 30,000 people may have been killed when an Islamist uprising in Hama was ruthlessly put down.
Activists say more than 1,500 civilians and 350 security personnel have been killed across Syria since protests began in mid-March.
Centre of protests Hama has been in a state of revolt and virtually besieged for the past month. According to activists on the ground, troops and tanks began their multi-pronged assault at dawn, smashing through hundreds of barricades erected by locals to reach the centre of Hama."[Tanks] are firing their heavy machineguns randomly and overrunning makeshift road blocks," a doctor in Hama told Reuters by phone, with machinegun fire in the background.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said medics had confirmed 45 deaths. But the toll could be as high as 100, a London-based spokesman for the group told the BBC.
Some residents said they saw bodies lying in the streets and that electricity and water supplies had been cut.
Security forces snipers were reported to have taken up positions on high buildings, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon.
One local activist said that five tanks had been abandoned by their crews in two parts of town, and that protesters had attacked and burnt down three police stations, our correspondent says.
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"They are treating people in the halls of the hospitals. A lot of injured people [have been] taken to homes and doctors are treating them there," he told the BBC's World Today programme.
'State of terror' He said the protesters had done nothing to provoke the military action.
"For three months, Hama has had huge demonstrations. More than 250 people have been killed, and nothing, no shot has come out from Hama people. Just barricades and stones and wood, that's all," he said. "It's just a 100% civilian uprising."
A Syrian government spokeswoman defended the military operation, saying that the authorities were forced to act because Hama had been in a "state of terror" for the past month.
Elsewhere on Sunday, three people were killed by security forces at Harak in the southern Deraa region, and six in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory.
On Saturday, troops shot dead three people who threw stones at a military convoy sent to quash the near-daily protests in Deir al-Zour, he said.
A total of 20 people were killed and 35 wounded on Friday as hundreds of thousands of protested in cities across Syria, rights groups said.
More than 500 people were arrested in a single operation in the Qadam neighbourhood of the capital Damascus, they added.
Since the start of the unrest, more than 12,600 have been arrested and 3,000 others are reported missing.
The government blames armed Islamist gangs for the unrest, but correspondents say the protests appear largely peaceful, with only isolated cases of residents arming themselves against the military assault.
Most foreign media is banned from the country, making it difficult to verify reports.
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