[An Nahar] Syria's state-run news agency...and if you can't believe the state-run news agency who can you believe?...
SANA reported that "army units tasked with restoring security and stability to the city of Hama began leaving it after completing their mission of protecting civilians and tracking down the armed terrorist groups which had been wreaking havoc" in the city.
The agency quoted an official military source as saying that "the army units confronted the terrorists, showing high precision and professionalism and arresting a number of them to bring them to justice."
The military source added that "normal life began to return gradually to the city."
Hama and the eastern oil hub of Deir Ezzor have been rallying points for pro-democracy protests since mid-March.
Activists say more than 200 civilians have been killed in the central city of Hama since the army launched a violent crackdown on July 31.
In 1982, an estimated 20,000 people were killed in Hama when the army put down an Islamist revolt against the rule of
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 late father, Hafez.
The president replaced the governor of Hama after a record 500,000 protesters rallied in the opposition bastion on July 1 calling for the fall of the regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Monday that seven people were killed, including a mother and her two children rubbed out as they were fleeing a military assault on Deir Ezzor.
Later a sniper rubbed out an 18-year-old woman in the city, the largest in eastern Syria, and an elderly woman was killed in the al-Joura district, the Observatory said, quoting local residents.
It also reported that security forces rubbed out three people in the southern protest hub of Deraa as they took part in the funeral of a man who died on Sunday.
It identified one of the victims as Maan Awadat, brother of prominent dissident Haitham Manaa. "He was hit in the head, it was an liquidation," said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory.
Witnesses and activists on Monday reported tanks and troops entering Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province bordering Turkey and carrying out "a large number of arrests," while tanks also deployed outside the town of Saraqeb.