"More than 1.2 million people marched: in Deir Ezzor there were more than 550,000, and in Hama more than 650,000," Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding the security forces were notable by their absence during the protests.
In Hama, 210 kilometers north of Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
, demonstrators rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud "in favor of national unity and against sectarianism," while also calling "for the fall of the regime," Abdul Rahman said.
The authorities are trying to quell protests in the city where rights groups said 25 non-combatants were killed by the security forces last Friday. Hama has seen some of the largest recent protests against
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...
's regime.
Memories in Hama remain strong of a 1982 crackdown by the president's father, Hafez al-Assad, against Islamists that left 20,000 people dead.
In Deir Ezzor near the border with Iraq, some 430 kilometers east of Damascus, "daily sit-ins are taking place calling for the fall of the regime," Abdul Rahman said.
Syrian television said "about 2,000 people took part in Friday's demonstration in Deir Ezzor, contrary to reports by satellite television channels which put their numbers at hundreds of thousands."
"Two demonstrators were stabbed to death in front of the Amneh mosque in Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
by pro-regime cut-throats who entered the compound and attacked" the faithful, said Abdul Karim Rihawi of the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights.
Dozens more were maimed or jugged, he said.
In Aleppo province, another civilian was rubbed out by security forces in Azzaz, he added.
In the central city of Homs, "two protesters were rubbed out by security forces who dispersed demonstrations in the al-Khalidiyeh and Dawar al-Fakhoura districts," he added.
In the northwest, another demonstrator died of gunshot wounds inflicted by security forces in Kfar Rouma village in Idlib province bordering Turkey, Rihawi said.
Several people were also reported maimed in Idlib.
For his part, Abdul Rahman said: "Two protesters were killed by security force fire and others were maimed" at Mleiha in the Damascus region.
Thousands of protesters also marched in the capital Damascus, despite a clampdown by security forces ahead of Friday's weekly Mohammedan prayers.
Around 5,000 people thronged the neighborhood of Midan and thousands more emerged from three mosques in Hajar al-Aswad chanting slogans calling for freedom, activists said.
Earlier Abdul Rahman told AFP that army and security forces had barricaded the district of Rukneddine, isolating the mostly Kurdish-populated neighborhood, while a clampdown was also imposed on Qaboun district.
"Rukneddine is completely isolated. Barricades have been erected at all the entrances. Thousands of security officers are patrolling and conducting searches of homes and making arrests," he said.
Since the start of anti-regime protests in Syria in mid-March, pro-democracy demonstrators have chosen Friday -- the weekly day of rest when devout Mohammedans gather for midday prayers -- to vent their rage and call for change.
Meanwhile La Belle France on Friday condemned the repression in Syria, particularly the crackdown on dissent in Homs, with the foreign ministry front man saying the army should protect the people rather than "sow terror."