Policeman killed as Syria demos enter second month

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A Syrian policeman was killed, state media reported on Saturday, as protests demanding freedoms and reform snowballed a month after they started in one of the West Asia’s most autocratic countries.

Despite pledges of reform by President Bashar al-Assad who unveiled a new government on Thursday, protests on Friday gripped several cities and towns across Syria, namely in the northeast home to the Kurdish minority.

US-led global calls for Syria to halt the crackdown apparently have been ignored by the authorities, as human rights activists spoke of repression in some places on Friday.

The official SANA news agency said a policeman was killed when violence flared during an anti-regime demonstration in the central industrial city of Homs.

"The policeman was killed during a demonstration in Homs after Friday prayers. He was beaten with sticks and stones," the agency reported on Saturday, adding he would be buried later in the day.

In Homs, baton-wielding police had waded into a crowd of around 4,000 people who chanted "freedom, freedom," political activist Najatai Tayara told AFP by telephone.

Exactly a month after the first rare protest was staged in Damascus calling for the release of political prisoners, tens of thousands of people were again on the streets across Syria demanding greater freedoms.

Up to 3,000 protesters marched in the centre of the key protest town of Daraa, in Southern Syria, where security forces shot dead at least seven people a week earlier.

"Between 2,500 and 3,000 people showed up at Al-Saraya area in the centre of the city, chanting slogans in favour of freedom and against the hostile regime," an activist said.

Security forces looked on as protesters chanted "Death rather than humiliation!" he said.

Hassan Berro, an activist in the Northeastern Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli, said some 5,000 people emerged from a mosque there to demonstrate in solidarity with the people of Daraa and Banias.

Banias on the Mediterranean coast, home to Sunnis, Alawite Muslims and Christians, is another protest centre where government forces had killed at least four people on Sunday.

"With our souls and our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you Daraa," the protesters shouted in Qamishli, waving Syrian flags.

Another 4,500 people demonstrated in the three Kurdish neighbourhoods of Ras al-Ain, Amuda and Derbassiye, near Qamishli, Berro told AFP.

Around 1,000 people held similar protests in the Northwestern coastal city of Latakia while in Jobar, north of Damascus, police with batons and tear gas clashed with some 2,000 demonstrators, rights activists said.

And about 50 protesters clashed with police in Barz, near Damascus, throwing stones at them, said rights activist Abdel Karim Rihawi.

The United States and the United Nations renewed calls on Syria to halt the violence.

"It is time for the Syrian Government to stop repressing their citizens and start responding to their aspirations," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Berlin on Friday.

A statement by the United Nations in Geneva denounced the regime's bloody response to the protests.

Friday's demonstrations came a day after Syria announced an amnesty for scores of prisoners detained in a month of protests and as it unveiled a new cabinet to replace the one that quit last month.

But there were still no signs that Assad would quickly lift draconian emergency law imposed by the ruling Baath Party and its former leader Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father who died in 2000.

On Thursday, human rights watch accused Syrian security and intelligence services of torturing many of the hundreds of protesters detained since the demonstrations began.