• At least nine people killed in bombardment of Homs
• AJ journalist Dorothy Parvaz taken from Syria to Iran
• Libyan rebels claim new gains in Misrata
• Still no sign of Gaddafi as Nato bombs Tripoli
Unrest in the southern Yemeni city of Taiz has spread to the capital Sana'a.
Reuters reports:
Yemeni security forces fired into the air on Wednesday as tens of thousands of protesters marched toward the cabinet building in Sanaa to ratchet up pressure on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign, witnesses said.
There was no immediate word on casualties, but witnesses said the gunfire was continuing.
The citizen journalist network Avaaz emailed this eyewitness testimony from Homs:
Snipers were spread around the Baladi field which has detainees inside it. Security forces still fire on soldiers who defected and refused to fire on innocent civilians. Security forces were also firing on civilians after they invaded the Suleimaniyeh area and looted some shops.
Heavy bombing to Bab Amr and Aldubiyeh areas started around 5 AM and lasted until 7 AM. No one was allowed to come closer than a 500m cordon from Brazil Street. There is talk of many Martyrs, one of the known ones is Maher Naqro who was shot while leaving home.
The missing al-Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz has been deported from Syria to Iran, the network has claimed.
In a statement a spokesman said: "We have now received information that she is being held in Tehran. We are calling for information from the Iranian authorities, access to Dorothy, and for her immediate release. We have had no contact with Dorothy since she left Doha on April 29 and we are deeply concerned for her welfare."
Yesterday a pro-regime newspaper claimed that Parvaz had been deported from Syria to unnamed country last week.
At least nine people were killed in the bombardment of Homs today, says Wissam Tarif from the human rights group Insan.
"The area is under siege. We have confirmed nine people killed there but the number might be much higher. There are dozens of people injured inside the [Baba Amr] area and there is no medical attention whatsoever. And people are not being able to take them to hospital."
Tarif, who is monitoring events from The Hague, claimed the regime deployed tanks because it can't count on rank and file soldiers to shoot protesters.
He claimed nine soldiers defected in Homs. Tarif said Homs nothing explains the shelling of the city "unless they are fighting another part of the army".
He added: "This is a ruthless regime that is willing to do anything to stay in power."
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A resident of Homs told the BBC that this morning's bombardment of the city lasted for three hours.
"There is no way for the wounded people to go out to the hospitals," he said.
Libyan rebels have secured a major break through by capturing Misrata airport, an AFP reporter claims, according to al-Jazeera.
The report was confirmed to CNN by a rebel spokesman in Benghazi.
A Foreign Office spokesman would not be drawn on whether Britain would follow other European countries by summoning the Syrian ambassador today. But he issued the following statement:
We've been at the forefront of efforts in the EU to increase pressure on the regime. The level of repression has been shocking, and the regime must change its behaviour. We are considering a range of options in support of this objective, and are in close consultation with our EU colleagues.
For obvious diplomatic reasons, we wouldn't trail in advance whether or not are planning to summon an Ambassador. But our messages to the regime have been consistently clear and unambiguous.
The EU is to open an office in Benghazi, its foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told the European parliament.
She said the office will help the flow of humanitarian aid and support to the Interim Transitional National Council. "There's much more we need to do," Ashton told the European Parliament, according to the BBC.
Several European countries are summoning Syrian ambassadors and threatening new sanctions targeting the country's leadership if it doesn't halt the repression of protesters, AP reports.
Germany's foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said the Syrian ambassador in Berlin was summoned to the ministry this afternoo as part of "a concerted European action."
Ask to comment on the report the Foreign Office in London said it would issue a statement shortly.
Birmingham university lecturer and blogger Scott Lucas has spotted this video of Yemeni protesters claiming control of a government building in the southern city of Taiz.
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A Bahraini oil company has sacked almost 300 employees for taking part in pro-democracy protest, the kingdom's energy minister has revealed, AP reports.
Abdulhussain bin Ali Mirza, who also serves as the chief executive of the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), said that 293 employees have been dismissed since the king declared martial law on March 15 to quell weeks of demonstrations.
Fifty employees were also suspended pending investigations by authorities, and 11 board members of the workers union were referred to the general prosecutor, Mirza told parliament yesterday.
There is no word of sackings on Bapco's website. It's most recent news release concerns its sponsorship of a scholarship scheme to British universities.
Yemen's security forces have shot at least one anti-government protester in the southern city of Taiz today, according to an AFP report on France24.
It says six people have been killed in the city since Sunday, as teachers stage a sit-in outside the ministry of education.
The Yemen Rights Monitor has graphic pictures and accounts of the violence based on reports from a local hospital [warning disturbing content].
The government has portrayed the teachers as an armed mob, who killed two shopkeepers.
"The security forces will not tolerate such illegal chaotic actions," security sources told the Yemen Observer.
Al Jazeera claims the Bahraini police carried out raids on girls' schools as part of a crackdown against pro-democracy protests.
A 16-year-old schoolgirl, alleges she was beaten by the security services, after being seized from her school along with three others. She told the broadcaster:
"He hit me on the head, I started bleeding. I fell down, he told them [guards] to keep me in the rest-room."
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Syrian-American blogger Amina Abdullah was woken by the sound of tanks last night.
I went to bed exhausted last night. Sleep would come quickly I was sure. Then, a sound like … well, at first I thought it was a garbage truck, you know, the kind that lifts up a dumpster … but that isn't normal here. And it was getting closer.
I got up and peaked out a window. Outside, there was a tank coming down the road. And then another.
Now, I'm not stupid. And I know a little bit about how to identify objects. So, what I saw was a slow moving column: a couple of tanks – Soviet built, I think T-72's? – followed by armored personnel carriers, then more tanks. They were spaced out, which was weird – well, I guess in case they came under attack …
They didn't stop here but kept going. And so loud as they went by. I have no idea where they were bound for but they were moving north … the news today is that Homs is under massive attack ...
So far regional sensitivity has meant that Obama administration has stopped short of calling for Assad to go.
As the Guardian's Simon Tisdall noted: "Unlike Libya, Syria is much too close to home for unelected Arab potentates who fear Assad's fall might presage their own."
Similarly, Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post says US policy on Syria is hamstrung.
There is, first of all, a reluctance to set aside conventional notions about Arab politics, and disbelief in the possibility of revolutionary change. There is anxiety about what might follow the collapse of dictatorship. And there is unwillingness to get in front of regional allies who are themselves invested in the status quo.
But Washington's approach to Assad could be about to change, according AP. The Obama administration is edging closer to calling for an end to the long rule of the Assad family in Syria, it reported.
Two administration officials said the US is concerned about a prevailing perception that its response to Assad's repression has been too soft, especially after helping usher long-time ally Hosni Mubarak out of power in Egypt and joining the international military coalition to shield civilians from attacks by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an end to mass arrests in Syria and demanded humanitarian access to Syria's besieged cities.
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Ban said:
I urge President Assad to heed the call of the people for reform and freedom and desist from the mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and to cooperate with the human rights monitors.
I am disappointed that the United Nations has not been granted access yet to Deraa and other places.
Ban also revealed he has discussed a possible ceasefire with the Libyan prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi.
Ban said:
He (Mahmoudi) even suggested the Libyan government was willing to have (an) immediate ceasefire with a monitoring team to be established by the United Nations and the African Union. But first and foremost there should be an end to the fighting in Misrata and elsewhere. Then we will be able to provide humanitarian assistance and in parallel we can continue our political dialogue.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has identified 647 civilians who have been killed in the violence.
Its spokesman, Rami Abdulrahman, who is monitoring events in Syria from London, added that more than 9,000 people have been arrested in the crackdown. In an Audioboo interview he said nearly 70 protesters recently released from prison in Banias said they were tortured. Many had signs of torture on their body, Abdulrahman said.
He denied government claims that the protesters were armed. "They talk about terrorist in Banias, I know Banias very well, no one in the demonstrations in Banias is a terrorist," he said.
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The Times' Martin Fletcher describes being arrested in Homs and been taken to windowless basement where "scores" of young men were being held.
"Quite clearly what was happening, was the regime was rounding up any young man of fighting age it could find on the streets and locking them up," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He claimed such tactics had stalled the momentum of the protests.
Razan Zeitouneh, a human rights lawyer in Damascus, underlines the difficulty of getting news out of Syria as she recounts going into hiding after being accused of being a foreign agent.
Speaking to the Institute of War and Peace Reporting she said:
The wanted list is very long these days; many of my friends have been arrested or are in hiding like me. The regime is arresting activists, but also ordinary people in large numbers. Many are tortured to break their spirits. The "ordinary" prisoners are released, so they tell of their fate and spread fear. Those with a leading role in the protests remain in custody.
But unlike Fletcher she says the protest movement is increasing.
The protest movement is growing every day. The people are not afraid anymore, not even of tanks and guns. That makes me optimistic, even if no one knows exactly what to do next. You know, at first the Syrians were certainly inspired by the events in Tunisia and Egypt. But the real reasons for the protests ran deeper. People chanted, "The Syrian people want to live in dignity." The driving force was the desire for a life free of humiliation from which we have been suffering for decades. From the outside, it is perhaps difficult to understand how painful it is to live year after year without dignity, not to be treated as a human being but simply as a subject.
There are numerous accounts of shelling and gunfire in the Syrian city of Homs.
"Homs is shaking with the sound of explosions from tank shelling and heavy machineguns in the Bab Amro neighbourhood," said human rights activist Najati Tayara told Reuters.
In a Twitter update leading Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid wrote:
Violent crackdown and heavy gunfire reported in Bab Amr Neighborhood in #Homs. It's been going on for hours #Syria #Assad
On his blog Abdulhamid notes that yesterday video was recorded showing protesters in Homs chanting "Bye Bye Bashar".
The sound of heavy gunfire can be heard in this video which it is claimed was recorded today in Homs.
Last night the state run news agency Sana said scores of "armed terrorists" were arrested in the groups in the countryside around Homs.
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The fate of refugees from both Syria and Libya is emerging as a key issue. Here's a round-up of the latest news and comment of the migrant crisis:
• Syrians attempting to flee across the Lebanese border to escape the violent clampdown of the regime are being rounded up and returned to an uncertain fate by Lebanese security forces. "Why does Lebanon send our brothers back to be killed and tortured by these monsters?" shopkeeper Abu Rabih, told the Guardian.
• There are signs that Muammar Gaddafi's regime is trying to force a refugee crisis as a weapon against his Nato enemies, according to the Telegraph. The International Organisation for Migration spokesman Jean Philippe Chauzy said: "We have testimonies of an incident where people were forced on to boats."
• Nick Clegg has backed a decision by the home secretary, Theresa May, not to open Britain's borders to migrants fleeing the turmoil in Libya and North Africa. Instead the Liberal Democrat leader said Italy should be offered practical assistance in helping those refugees and migrants who manage to complete the dangerous journey from Libya across the Mediterranean.
• The refugee crisis threatens to undermine Europe's desire to promote democracy in North Africa, argues Daniel Korski, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
"Comparing 1989 and 2011 suggests a desire by European leaders to be part of a seamless story of democracy's advance. But the rafts floating across the Mediterranean ruin the narrative," he says.
Here are some of the other key developments in the region:
• Rami Makhlouf, Syria's leading businessman and a key ally of the president, has warned that the regime will fight to the end. "The decision of the government now is that they decided to fight," he told the New York Times. Makhlouf was profiled in the Guardian last month as an inner circle figure who symbolises nepotism and corruption in the regime.
• Syria has dropped its bid to get a place on the UN's Human Rights Council, according to the BBC. Syria denies that its position has changed, but diplomats told the BBC that Kuwait has indicated it will replace Syria as a candidate for the vacant post.
• Libyan rebels say they have made new gains in the port city of Misrata. They claim they have surrounded Gaddafi's forces at the airport and have taken the town of Zareek, about 15 miles west of Misrata.
• Questions are being asked across the Libyan capital about the leadership Gaddafi, who has not been seen since he reportedly escaped the air strike in which his son was killed. Gaddafi's supporters are wondering aloud about their leader's fate, while at the same time complaining that the UN-imposed siege was taking an increasingly heavy toll, reports Martin Chulov.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2011/may/11/syria-libya-middle-east-unrest-live
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