AMMAN (Reuters) – At least 20 people died in clashes and strikes paralysed parts of Syria yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad held an inconclusive meeting with Arab ministers seeking to end months of violence.
Nine soldiers were killed by armed rebels and 11 civilians were killed by army gunfire, residents and anti-Assad activists said, as little emerged from a closely watched meeting between Assad and members of an Arab League committee on Syria.
The delegation leader, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, said the talks had been “cordial and frank” and that the ministers would meet Syrian officials again on October 30 in either Doha or Damascus.
Down the hill from where the envoys met Assad at the “Palace of the People”, the authorities organised a rally to show support for the president, who inherited power from his late father 11 years ago.
But with armoured assaults on cities and towns failing to end seven months of protests against 41 years of Assad family rule, international pressure on the president continued to grow.
The United Nations says his crackdown has killed 3,000 people, although Syria says hundreds of security personnel have been killed by armed groups trying to foment sectarian conflict.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who met Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani yesterday, said his country was consulting with Arab League members to push Syria to “pull troops from cities and end its cruel treatment of its people.
“There are measures that have been taken and activated in this regard so that the Syrian government ends its aggression against its people, but these do not include any sanctions that could hurt the Syrian people,” Davutoglu said after talks in Amman with King Abdullah and senior Jordanian officials.
Turkish officials who spoke on condition of anonymity say the sanctions, which were announced last month without details, will affect military, banking and energy ties, among others.
The United States and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on Syria’s small, but key, oil sector, which is linked to the Assad family and their friends.
In the million-strong city of Homs, a hotbed of opposition to Assad, residents and activists said a general strike kept most workers at home and shops shut.
One resident said armed opponents of Assad had enforced the strike. Firing by soldiers, which killed 11 people across Syria yesterday, also kept people indoors.
In the town of Hamrat, north of Homs, suspected army deserters killed nine soldiers in an attack on a bus with a rocket-propelled grenade, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It was the latest incident in an armed insurgency emerging alongside the campaign of street protests.
“This will end with the fall of the regime. It is nearly unavoidable,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said.
