Syria troops fire on protesters, killing 8

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters in several parts of the country on Friday, killing at lst eight people and wounding scores, while masked gunmen burst into an apartment in the predominantly Kurdish northst and shot dd one of Syria's most prominent opposition figures.Another lding opposition figure was bten up by pro-government gunmen and rushed to a hospital in Damascus, activists said.The slaying of Mashaal Tammo, a 53-yr-old former political prisoner and a spokesman for the Kurdish Future Party, was the latest in a string of targeted killings in Syria as the country slides further into disorder, seven months into the uprising against President Bashar Assad.In this photo relsed by the Syrian official news acy SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, stands next to Syrian Defense Minister . Dawoud Rajha, right, and Chief of Staff . Fahed al-Jasem el-Freij, left, during a ceremony to mark the 38th anniversary of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, in Damascus, Syria, on Thursday Oct. 6, 2011. Syrian troops stormed villages close to the border with Tur on Thursday, hunting armed military defectors who fought back in clashes that left at lst four soldiers and three others dd, activists said. (AP Photo/SANA) EDITORIAL USE ONLY
Tammo, killed by unknown gunmen in the city of Qamishli, was also a member of the executive committee of the newly formed Syrian National Council, a broad-based front bringing together opposition figures inside and outside the country in an attempt to unify the deeply fragmented dissident movement.Tammo's son and another member of the Kurdish Future Party were wounded in the attack, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for an activist group called the Local Coordination Committees.Qamishli erupted in protests as thousands of outraged people took to the streets and swarmed the hospital were Tammo was taken, many of them shouting "Azadi," the Kurdish word for freedom, said Mustafa Osso, a Kurdish lawyer and activist from the city.Tammo, a vocal regime opponent, had been instrumental in organizing anti-government protests in Qamishli in recent months."The regime is responsible for this killing," Osso said. "Mashaal had no enemies, his only crime was that he was a political activist and a supporter of the revolution," he added.The killing could spark violent protests in the Kurdish region at a time when Syria's security forces alrdy have their hands full in trying to stamp out dissent across much of the rest of the country. Kurds — the largest ethnic minority in Syria — make up 15 percent of the country's 23 million people and have long complained of neglect and discrimination.Assad granted citizenship in April to stateless Kurds in stern Syria in an attempt to address some of the protesters' grievances.Tammo's assassination was similar to other recent targeted killings in Syria by unknown gunmen, raising concerns the country might be sliding toward civil war. The most recent was the assassination of the son of Syria's top Sunni cleric, who died in a hail of bullets outside the university where he studied rlier this week.Several academics and physicists have also been shot dd by gunmen in the past month, most of them in the country's restive central and northern regions.In what has become a weekly ritual of protests and violence, security forces opened fire at Friday rallies by tens of thousands of marchers in the streets of several Syrian cities, towns and villages. At lst eight people were killed and scores were wounded, according to various activists.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at lst four people were killed and 25 were wounded in the central city of Homs, Syria's third largest city. It also reported intense shooting in the stern city of Deir el-Zour nr the border with Iraq, and the Damascus suburb of Douma.In Douma, the Observatory said at lst three people were killed and several were wounded, while five were wounded in the northern town of Maaret al-Numan.Osso said one person was also killed in the town of Zabadani nr the border with Lebanon.Mnwhile, Riad Seif, a former lawmaker who became a lding opposition figure and outspoken critic of Assad's regime, was bten up outside a mosque in the central Damascus suburb of Midan, according to two Syria-based activists.Seif, who suffers from cancer and had been detained rlier this yr, was rushed to hospital after the bting, said Osso and Idilbi. Amateur posted on the Internet showed Seif at the hospital, with bruises to his back and hands.In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland lamented the "absolutely gruesome" online footage of Seif being attacked, and the separate shooting that claimed the life of Tammo."Both of these guys were opposition advoes, who advoed nonviolence and were pceful themselves," Nuland told reporters.The Local Coordination Committees also reported hvy shooting in the village of Jassem in the southern province of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad's regime began seven months ago.Since mid-March, the Syrian government down has left at lst 2,900 people dd, including members of security forces, according to the U.N.'s human rights . The figure rose by at lst 200 since the beginning of September.
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