Syrian security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters after prayers at several locations around the country on Friday, The Associated Press report.
At the same time, the report said, the army sent reinforcements into a southern area where military defectors recently launched deadly attacks on regime troops.
According to two local human rights groups, the Local Coordination Committees and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, one person was killed in the shooting in the central city of Homs, and a man who was wounded in the southern province of Daraa earlier in the day died of his wounds.
Friday’s nationwide protests came a day after Syrian army defectors killed at least 27 soldiers and government personnel, in three separate clashes at dawn in the southern province of Daraa.
According to a report released Thursday by the New York-based Human Rights Watch group, Syrian military commanders have ordered their troops to indiscriminately shoot unarmed protesters.
Earlier this week, the United Nations was warned that Syrian citizens are dying by the thousands. Figures released by UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay showed that more than 5,000 have died since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March. At the beginning of the month, the UN had estimated the death toll was 4,000.
At least 300 of the dead are children, Pillay told the UN Security Council in a report Tuesday. She called on the UN to refer Assad to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Earlier this month Pillay said that Syria was “on the cusp of civil war.”
Meanwhile, Russia surprised Western diplomats on Thursday when it put forth a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council taking a harder line on violence in Syria.
Russia’s draft condemns the violence from both sides, but includes a reference to “disproportionate use of force by Syrian authorities.”
It does not, however, call for the sanctions Western officials have been pushing for. In October, Russia and fellow veto-wielding China voted against a European draft resolution that threatened sanctions.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)
