The Guardian reports:

Syrian tanks and gunmen have swept through two towns to root out anti-government protesters amid heavy firing that has sent many fleeing to safer areas.

Three people were reported to have died in the violence, the latest in an escalating campaign of repression by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against an uprising that erupted in mid-March. The heaviest assault was reported in the coastal city of Latakia, where a day earlier thousands turned out to demand the president’s removal. At least 20 tanks and armoured personnel fanned out into the city’s el-Ramel district as intense gunfire rang out, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Shooting and explosions were also heard in the town’s Slaibeh neighbourhood, according to the Observatory and the Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria, an activist group that documents protests. Two people were killed in the shooting, they said. Scores of security agents and pro-government gunmen, known as Shabiha, entered the town of Qusair, near the border with Lebanon, and several nearby villages, arresting scores of residents, Abdul-Rahman said. LCC Syria said that one person was killed in the shooting. It was not possible to verify the reports.

The New York Times reports:

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria rebuffed an appeal from Turkey on Tuesday to end the Syrian crackdown that has emerged as one of the bloodiest chapters in the Arab uprising and has plunged his country into its deepest isolation in years.

Mr. Assad said in a statement after a six-hour meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, that his government would press ahead with its fight against militant Islamists, the term the government has often used to describe the instigators of an uprising that began in March and has posed the gravest challenge to Mr. Assad’s rule.

Sana, Syria’s state news agency, quoted Mr. Assad as telling Mr. Davutoglu that Damascus “will not relent in pursuing the terrorist groups in order to protect the stability of the country and the security of the citizens.”

“But it is also determined to continue reforms. And is open to any help offered by friendly and brotherly states,” the statement published by Sana said.

The Turkish foreign minister arrived in Syria on Tuesday morning to deliver a message that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has summarized as Ankara’s having “run out of patience” with a crackdown that has killed, by the count of some Syrian opposition groups, more than 2,000 people.

The Associated Press reports:

The Obama administration is preparing to explicitly demand the departure of Syrian President Bashar Assad and hit his regime with tough new sanctions, U.S. officials said Tuesday as the State Department signaled for the first time that American efforts to engage the government are finally over.

The White House is expected to lay out the tougher line by the end of this week, possibly on Thursday, according to officials who said the move will be a direct response to Assad’s decision to step up the ruthlessness of the crackdown against pro-reform demonstrators by sending tanks into opposition hotbeds. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials previously had said Assad has “lost legitimacy” as a leader and that he either had to spearhead a transition to democracy or get out of the way. They had not specifically demanded that he step down. The new formulation will make it clear that Assad can no longer be a credible reformist and should leave power, the officials said.

Rana Kabbani writes:

One of two eye doctors are determining the future of Syria. The first is alive and kicking: son of a brutal military dictator; heir to a corrupt family junta that has ruled the country for 41 years. The second is a long-dead private citizen, buried at the bottom of his family’s modest garden.

Dr Hikmat Khani was head of Hama’s national hospital when, in 1982, his city was besieged and bombarded on the orders of Bashar Assad’s father Hafiz and his uncle Rif’at. To rout 1,500 armed Islamists there, the Assads killed 25,000 innocent civilians. Tens of thousands were rounded up and tortured. Young girls were gang-raped and women had their hands chopped off so their bracelets could be stolen more quickly after their men had been murdered.

The maimed lay on the streets of the half-flattened city, crying out in agony, as many eyewitnesses have recounted since. Dr Khani sought to help what wounded he could treat. For this, he was taken to the state porcelain factory, which had been turned into a detention centre. There, this renowned specialist was made an example of in front of the other prisoners. He had his right eye gouged out, then was left to bleed for three hours before being beaten to death. His broken mess of a body was sent to his pregnant wife, with his identity card nailed to his naked chest.

Today Hama is being bombarded in much the same way by Bashar and Maher, with weaponry paid for by an impoverished Syrian people through the stiff “defence tax”. It is thus that Deraa, Deir Ezzor, Qamishli, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Maarat al-Numan, Idlib, Jisr al-Shughour, Muadhamiya, Zabadani, Midan and all our other towns and cities and quarters have been made to subsidise the murder of their own sons and daughters.

Though all the undemocratic regimes of the Arab world are unremittingly cruel, Assad’s must stand out as the most inventively macabre. Its brutish, uncouth, illiterate and famously greedy Shabbiha death squads are being bussed around the country, with orders to rape, loot, burn, and kill. It is they who pull out the fingernails of young boys, they who torture them to death, castrate their bodies, only to force their grief-crazed parents to recant their accusations on the state’s propaganda television.

The New York Times reports:

Syria’s state news media broadcast stark images of the destruction in the besieged city of Hama for the first time on Friday, showing burned buildings, makeshift barricades and deserted streets strewn with rubble in footage that appeared designed to show that government forces had put down a rebellion in the city.

The images were unmistakably Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city and a focal point of the five-month-old uprising that has left President Bashar al-Assad’s leadership isolated and weakened. They suggested the military had retaken control of a city that had briefly wrested itself from four decades of authoritarian rule by the Assad family and enjoyed an unprecedented measure of freedom.

The reports by Syrian television and Sana, the official news agency, portrayed the army as Hama’s savior. The news appeared aimed at reinforcing the leadership’s message to internal opponents that they are regarded as armed insurrectionist gangs inspired by hostile foreign powers and will be dealt with accordingly. But the television footage of the wreckage in Hama also implicitly acknowledged that the violence there had been far more serious than Mr. Assad’s government had until now been willing to publicly admit.

It also underlined a legacy of the assault: Hama was remarkably peaceful after security forces withdrew in June. Violence erupted only when the government, fearing the momentum the city might provide the uprising, began its ferocious assault on Sunday. Although government officials insist the protesters were armed, not a single weapon was seen in the streets on a recent visit, an account confirmed by diplomats in their trips there. Barricades were set up, but only to block the return of the military and security forces.

“Today we are alive, but tomorrow we don’t know,” said a resident reached by telephone who gave his name as Fadi. “The humanitarian situation is getting worse day by day.”

Government officials offered an altogether different version of events, in reports from Damascus, the capital, that appeared more and more to defy reality.

Reuters reports:

At least 45 civilians were killed in a tank assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to occupy the center of Hama, an activist said on Thursday, in a sharp escalation of a military campaign aimed at ending an uprising against his rule.

Reacting to intensifying assaults on Syrian cities and towns, the U.N. Security Council overcame deep divisions and condemned Assad’s bloody crackdown on civilian protesters. It was the first substantive action by the United Nations on Syria’s five-month-old uprising for political freedoms.

An activist who managed to leave the besieged city told Reuters that 40 people were killed by heavy machinegun fire and shelling by tanks in al-Hader district north of the Orontes river on Wednesday and early on Thursday.

The activist, who gave his name as Thaer, said five more people from the Fakhri and Assa’ad families, including two children, were killed as they were trying to leave Hama by car on the al-Dhahirya highway.

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent media, making it difficult to verify witness accounts and official statements.

Residents earlier said tanks had advanced into central Hama on Wednesday after heavily shelling the city and occupied the main Orontes Square, the site of some of the largest protests against Assad, who succeeded his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

Snipers spread onto rooftops and into the nearby citadel. They said shelling concentrated on al-Hader district, large parts of which were razed in 1982 when forces loyal to Hafez al-Assad overran Hama to crush Islamist insurgents, killing many thousands of people.

The New York Times reports:

Syrian security forces bombed the central city of Hama for a second day on Monday as the government pressed its campaign to crush a four-month-old popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. On Sunday, at least 70 people were killed when the military and security forces assaulted Hama and other restive cities before dawn, in the broadest and fiercest crackdown yet.

The shelling resumed Monday in the early hours of the morning as people were returning home from mosques where they had performed dawn prayers, according to residents and protesters. At least three people were killed, according to activists.

Obada Arwany, an activist reached by telephone, said that tanks had entered two neighborhoods, Al Qousour and Al Hamidiya, and bombed residential buildings there. One man died in his sleep when his house was bombed and another was killed by a sniper’s bullet as he was getting in his car.

“The city is like a ghost town,” Mr. Arwany said. “We were not expecting this at all. Hama is getting massacred.”

Al Jazeera reports:

Syrian forces have killed nearly 140 people, including 100 when the army stormed the flashpoint protest city of Hama to crush dissent on the eve of Ramadan, activists have said.

Rights groups said it was one of deadliest days in Syria since demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15, demanding democratic reforms and the downfall of the government.

As reports of the brutal crackdown on Hama unfurled, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Turkey condemned the violence, while a US diplomat said it was “full-on warfare”.

AFP reports:

Speaking to the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, [JJ] Harder [the press attache at the US embassy in Damascus] said: “I think we can safely say it’s full-on warfare by the Syrian government on its own people.”

He said: “This full-on warfare in which the government is engaged in today, I think, amounts to nothing less than a last act of utter desperation.

“They’re killing their own people, they’re sending their tanks into their own cities. It’s ridiculous.”

Asked if he accepted the Syrian government’s contention that its forces were up against armed gangs, Harder said: “There is one big armed gang in Syria and it’s named the Syrian government.

“That’s the armed gang that is pillaging its own cities, that’s the armed gang that is striking terror into the hearts of a lot of these people who are out there who just want to peacefully protest.”

The Guardian reports:

A sweep by government forces has seized one person every hour during the five-month Syrian uprising and detained them in secret, leaving their families no way to locate them, says a human rights group.

The group, Avaaz, claims 2,918 people have been “forcibly disappeared” since anti-government demonstrations began in Syria on 15 March. Most are accused of being involved in the rebellion that continues to undermine a regime long renowned as the Middle East’s most formidable police state.

An additional 12,617 people also remain in detention; however their incarceration has been declared to family members. Tens of thousands more people have fled from towns and villages in northern Syria in the face of intensive military assaults that Damascus claims are ridding the area of criminals and collaborators.

The scale of the detentions in Syria has been compiled by a network of activists and researchers who have provided information to Avaaz. The group has gathered photos of many of the disappeared and is launching an awareness campaign today.

“Hour by hour, peaceful protesters are plucked from crowds by Syria’s infamously brutal security forces, never to be seen again,” said Avaaz’s executive director, Ricken Patel. “President Assad’s attempt to terrorise Syrians into submission isn’t working, but they urgently need the international community to demand the release of the disappeared and a transition to democracy.”

Al Jazeera reports:

When widespread protests broke out in Syria in March, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime turned to its feared security services to smother the anti-government movement.

The bloody response has so far succeeded where other attempts to put down the “Arab awakening” have failed, and President Assad remains in power.

Verifying the toll of the crackdown is difficult, since the government has banned most journalists and observers, but activists and researchers say more than 10,000 people have been detained and at least 1,500 killed since March. A response of proportional size in the United States, by way of comparison, would have meant more than 136,000 people detained and 20,450 killed.

At least 66 people are believed to have died while in the custody of Syrian authorities, according to a list provided by activists to Human Rights Watch researcher Nadim Houry in June.

Outside audiences have encountered the regime’s brutal response primarily through grainy YouTube footage and second-hand accounts relayed by expatriate activists.

These brushstrokes paint a useful yet broad picture: a dozen people killed in this city, a thousand people protesting in that city.

But first-hand accounts from those who have been through the packed cells of Assad’s jails or those who have come under gunfire from his troops offer a more personal understanding of the uprising.

Recently, Al Jazeera spoke with six men, three of whom were in Syria, and three of whom had left the country. All had been arrested or seen relatives suffer at the hands of the security services.

Their stories, which are available below, portray a violent state system in a spasm of panic, unsure of what it is confronting, yet nevertheless determined to crush it.

Stories of six survivors.

(H/t Robin Yassin-Kassab.)

Al Jazeera reports:

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across Syria following Friday prayers, activists said, protesting against President Bashar al-Assad and defying an intensified military crackdown on their uprising.

Demonstrations demanding an end to Assad’s rule broke out in the Medan district of Damascus, the besieged city of Homs, Latakia on the coast and the southern city of Deraa.

About 400,000 protesters came out in the eastern province of Deir Ez Zor, on the border with Iraq’s Sunni heartland, activists said.

Anthony Shadid reports from Hama:

As anthems go, this one is fittingly blunt. “Come on Bashar, leave,” it declares to President Bashar al-Assad. And in the weeks since it was heard in protests in this city, the song has become a symbol of the power of the protesters’ message, the confusion in their ranks and the violence of the government in stopping their dissent.

Although no one in Hama seems to agree on who wrote the song, there is near consensus on one point: A young cement layer who sang it in protests was dragged from the Orontes River this month with his throat cut and, according to residents, his vocal cords ripped out. Since his death, boys as young as 6 have offered their rendition in his place. Rippling through the virtual communities that the Internet and revolt have inspired, the song has spread to other cities in Syria, where protesters chant it as their own.

“We’ve all memorized it,” said Ahmed, a 40-year-old trader in Hama who regularly attends protests. “What else can you do if you keep repeating it at demonstrations day after day?”

Tunisia can claim the slogan of the Arab revolts: “The people want to topple the regime.” Egyptians made famous street poetry that reflected their incomparable wit. “Come on Bashar, Leave,” is Syria’s contribution to the pop culture of sedition, the raw street humor that mingles with the furor of revolt and the ferocity of crackdown.

Al Jazeera reports:

Troops commanded by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brother have surrounded the Damascus suburb of Harasta, residents say.

The move appears to be part of an ongoing crackdown on urban centres that have experienced protests on a daily basis.

“Hundreds of Fourth Division troops have sealed off all of Harasta’s dozen entrances,” a resident of the large suburb, who works as an engineer and managed to leave Harasta, told the Reuters news agency by telephone.

“They are wearing combat fatigues, helmets, ammunition belts and carrying assault rifles. Water, electricity and phones have been cut.”

Anthony Shadid reports from Hama:

In this city that bears the scars of one of the modern Middle East’s bloodiest episodes, the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad has begun to help Syrians imagine life after dictatorship as it forges new leaders, organizes its own defense and reckons with a grim past in an uncertain experiment that showcases the forces that could end Mr. Assad’s rule.

Dozens of barricades of trash bins, street lamps, bulldozers and sandbags, defended in various states of vigilance, block the feared return of the security forces that surprisingly withdrew last month. Protests begin past midnight, drawing raucous crowds of youths celebrating the simple fact that they can protest. At dusk, distant cries echo off cinder blocks and stone that render a tableau here of jubilation, fear and memory of a crackdown a generation ago whose toll — 10,000, 20,000, more — remains a defiant guess.

“Hama is free,” the protesters chant, “and it will remain free.”

Freedom is a word heard often these days in this city, Syria’s fourth largest, though that freedom could yet prove elusive. Hama rebelled last month, and the government withdrew the soldiers and security forces seemingly to forestall even more bloodshed, ceding space along the Orontes River that is really neither liberated nor subjugated.

In the uncertain interregnum, punctuated by worry that the security forces might return and fear of informers left behind, Hama has emerged in the four-month revolt against Mr. Assad as a turbulent model of what a city in Syria might resemble once four decades of dictatorship end. In skittish streets, there are at least nascent notions of self-determination, as residents seek to speak for themselves and defend a city that they declare theirs.

The sole poster of Mr. Assad in the city hangs from the undamaged headquarters of the ruling Baath Party. Gaggles of residents gather on the curb to debate politics, sing protest songs and retell the traumas of the crackdown in 1982, when the government stormed Hama to end an Islamist uprising. For the first time in memory, clerics and the educated elite in Hama are negotiating with the governor over how to administer the city, in a country long accustomed to a monologue delivered by the ruler to the ruled.

Meanwhile, “Nour Ali” reports from Damascus:

Brute force has been the main weapon of the Syrian regime as it has sought to crush growing protests, killing at least 1,500 people and torturing hundreds more. But Syrians have also been besieged by relentless propaganda.

In a week that has seen at least 40 die and escalating violence in Homs, the country’s third largest city, state radio and private stations owned by regime cronies have been blaring out songs exalting Bashar al-Assad as “Abu Hafez”, suggesting his son Hafez could succeed him, or anointing him president for “all eternity”.

Baseball caps, T-shirts and flags adorned with the president’s face are sold around Damascus. Billboards show him surrounded by pink hearts – in stark contrast to the sterner, more militarised pictures of his father, Hafez, the former president.

Television programmes show residents shopping and driving, portraying calm and order while regime supporters chant that they would shed blood for their leader.

The Associated Press reports:

Inside a filthy detention center in Damascus, eight or nine interrogators repeatedly bludgeoned a skinny teenager whose hands were bound and who bore a bullet wound on the left side of his chest. They struck his head, back, feet and genitals until he was left on the floor of a cell, bleeding from his ears and crying out for his mother and father to help him.

Ibrahim Jamal al-Jahamani, a fellow prisoner who said he witnessed the brutal scene in Syria in May, heard the interrogators demand that the 15-year-old proclaim strongman Bashar Assad as his “beloved” president.

The youth, later identified as Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, refused. Instead, he chanted an often-heard slogan from anti-regime street protests calling for “freedom and the love of God and our country.”

Tamer’s refusal apparently was the final straw for the interrogators.

“Guards broke his right wrist, beating him with clubs on his hands, which were tied behind his back,” al-Jahamani told The Associated Press after his release from detention, referring to the beatings as torture.

“They also beat him on the face, head, back, feet and genitals until he bled from the nose, mouth and ears and fell unconscious,” he recalled.

“He pleaded for mercy and yelled: ‘Mom, dad, come rescue me!’” al-Jahamani said. “He was lying like a dog on the floor in his underwear, with blood covering his body. But his interrogators had no compassion that they were savagely beating a boy,” al-Jahamani added, his voice breaking with emotion.

The New York Times reports:

Tens of thousands of protesters poured Friday into the streets of Hama, a Syrian city abandoned by the military and security forces, gathering in the country’s biggest demonstration in nearly four months of unrest and staking a festive claim to a region that bore the brunt of a ferocious government crackdown a generation ago.

The scenes of residents rallying in a central square there, captured by activists on video and circulated on the Internet, seemed to signal a new stage in an uprising that has so far only aspired to rival the mass protests in Egypt and Tunisia, where authoritarian leaders were eventually forced to step down. Protesters exploited at least a temporary vacuum in the official security presence in Hama to stage a panorama of dissent as celebratory as it was angry.

“Leave! Leave!” protesters chanted to a hip-hop beat.

The military and security forces withdrew last month from Hama for reasons that remain unclear. But the move seemed to reflect a compelling, if ambiguous, turn in an uprising that until recently was marked by repeated clashes between protesters and armed troops.

After weeks of stalemate, a new dynamic has emerged recently in Syria. The opposition gathered Monday in a rare meeting in Damascus, government officials are promising reform in coming weeks and protesters have shown a resilience that seems more and more difficult for the government to suppress.

The most visible shift has occurred in Hama, where a government crackdown in 1982 made the city synonymous with the brutality of Syria’s leadership. Since the withdrawal last month, protests have gathered momentum. Each night, youths have converged on Aasi Square, which they have renamed Freedom Square. On successive Fridays, crowds have grown bigger, surpassing 10,000 last week, diplomats say.