Syrian troops capture protest city

To the east, troops seized control of another flashpoint city, Deir el-Zour, after four days of intense shelling and gunfire.

The government took journalists on a tour to see a rare glimpse of Hama, a city of 800,000 which has seen some of the largest anti-government protests of the five-month-old uprising.

About 50 armoured personnel carriers were placed on flatbed trucks heading out of the city after a week-long military assault the government said was aimed at rooting out “terrorists.” Cement and metal barriers blocked streets and soldiers were removing some of the barricades.

Piles of uncollected rubbish littered the streets. At the southern entrance of the city, a two-storey police station was burnt.

“We have finished a delicate operation in which we eradicated terrorists’ hideouts,” an army officer said.

During last week’s siege, witnesses gave a far different story, telling how President Bashar Assad’s forces shelled residential areas and snipers deployed on the rooftops, killing up to 250 people.

Syria has blocked nearly all outside witnesses to the violence by banning foreign media. It also has restricted local coverage that strays from the party line that the regime is fighting thugs and religious extremists who are acting out a foreign conspiracy.

Rights groups say about 1,700 people have been killed across Syrian since March, and an aggressive new military campaign that began with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan a week ago has killed several hundred.

An activist in Deir el-Zour said the regime had taken over the city and the military was “shooting anything that moves”.

Syrian troops also launched another operation in three suburbs of the capital Damascus as well as the north-western village of Sarmin, near the Turkish border, where a woman was killed and three people wounded.

Security forces also killed an activist in the north-western town of Taftanaz, where the army is conducting a military operation.

With the situation growing bleaker in the country, Assad came under a new barrage of international pressure. The Turkish foreign minister urged him to stop killing protesters and US officials said the Obama administration was preparing to explicitly demand his departure.

Envoys from India, Brazil and South Africa met Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem who explained to them that the army had entered some Syrian cities after “armed groups carried out acts of killing and sabotage,” according to state-run news agency, SANA.

Assad held more than six hours of talks with the visiting Turkish minister on Tuesday. Ahmet Davutoglu said they discussed “concrete steps” to end the violent crackdown on protesters.

Speaking to reporters on his return to Turkey, Mr Davutoglu said the talks were cordial but did not say what specific steps they had discussed or whether Mr Assad had agreed to consider them.

“We discussed ways to prevent confrontation between the army and the people and tensions like those in Hama in the most open and clear way,” Mr Davutoglu said, referring to the Syrian city that has become a flashpoint in the five-month-old uprising against Mr Assad’s autocratic rule.

“The coming days will be important to see if the expectations are being met. We hope that internal peace and calm is achieved and steps for reform are taken.”

Mr Assad rebuffed the pressure to scale back the crackdown. Instead, Syria’s state-run news agency said he told Mr Davutoglu the government will relentlessly fight “terrorist groups” – a term Syrian authorities often use for government opponents.