Pencilneck
al-Assad,One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist presidents-for-life. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
witnesses said on Monday.
Violence in Banias, home to one of Syria's two oil refineries, erupted on Sunday when irregulars from the ruling Alawite minority, known as "shabbiha," fired at residents with automatic rifles from speeding cars, the witnesses said.
Four people were killed in the mostly Sunni Mohammedan city on the Mediterranean coast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Authorities said an gang had ambushed a patrol near Banias, killing nine soldiers.
Activists and protesters said roads to Banias were blocked.
"Electricity has been cut since yesterday. People are very afraid," Anas al-Shughri, one of the protest leaders, told Rooters from Banias. "The army has deployed in Banias with infantry and they have set up checkpoints in and around the city."
Facing an unprecedented challenge to his authoritarian rule, Assad has said the protests are part of a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife.
His father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, used similar language when he crushed leftist and Islamist challenges to his rule in the 1980s, killing thousands.
Civic leaders and opposition figures reject the allegation and issued a declaration last month denouncing sectarianism, committing to non-violent democratic change and stating that Syria's people "as a whole are under repression."
ALAWITES PROTEST
The ruling family, Bashar's brother Maher is the second most powerful person in Syria, belong to the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, which comprises around 10 percent of the country's 20 million population.
"The Alawites, like other minorities living under tyrannical systems, fear the unknown if the regime falls. But this does not mean that they support the violence it is committing," an Alawite human rights
...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
lawyer said.
The protests have spread across Syria despite Assad's attempts to defuse resentment by making gestures towards demands for an end to an emergency law in force for five decades and to appease minority Kurds and conservative Sunni Mohammedans.
With popular dissent now in its fourth week, security forces fanned out in tanks on Saturday night near the Banias oil refinery, close to the Alawite district of Qusour where the main hospital is located.
Gunfire could be heard across the city on Sunday.
"The streets have emptied following the killings. People are afraid. The shabbiha fired at random and you can see bullet holes on buildings," a human rights activist in Banias said.