President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
are reported to have stormed the town of Bdama near the Turkish border.
The alleged assault on Saturday followed another Friday of protests, which have grown in size despite Assad's wide-ranging military campaign to crush a three-month old uprising. Security forces rubbed out 19 protesters on Friday, activists said.
"They came at 7am to Bdama. I counted nine tanks, 10 armoured carriers, 20 jeeps and 10 buses. I saw shabbiha (pro-Assad gunnies) setting fire to two houses," said Saria Hammouda, a lawyer living in the border town, in the Jisr al-Shughur region.
Saturday's violence centred around Bdama, about 2km from the Turkish border, which is one of the epicentres providing food and supplies for the thousands of people who have decamped their homes and have taken shelter near the Turkish border.
"Bdama's residents don't dare take bread to the refugees and the refugees are fearful of arrests if they go into Bdama for food," Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Rooters news agency.
Bdama is in the same region as Jisr al-Shughur, the focus of military operations a week ago.
Mohamed Fezu, a Syrian political activist, spoke to Al Jizz from Jisr al-Shughur on Saturday afternoon and said: "We're surrounded by the military from all over the area."
Amid reports of Syrian troops moving into Turkish border towns, the British Foreign Commonwealth office issued a statement urging Britons to leave Syria "immediately" and advising against travel to Syria.