THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Syria’s security forces stand accused of carrying out a “Good Friday massacre” of more than 50 protesters on one of the bloodiest days yet in the five-week uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Mr Assad responded to growing popular pressure by lifting Syria’s draconian 1962 emergency laws. But the president’s apparently conciliatory gesture failed to signal a softening of the regime’s determination to crush dissent.
Across the country, protesters spilling out of mosques were met with live ammunition, sometimes within minutes of Friday prayers ending.
In Damascus, the capital, and towns and cities to the east, west and south, every attempt to challenge the regime was met with the same remorseless vengeance.
By dusk, there were fatalities reported from nine separate demonstrations. Up to 54 people were killed, according to a Daily Telegraph tally of reports by Syrian activists, witnesses and doctors.
Even by the blood-soaked standards of the repression that has characterised the Syrian uprising - at least 220 people have died since protests first began on March 18th - this was killing on a different order of magnitude. » | Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent | Friday, April 22, 2011
