...not to be confused with
individual rights,mind you...
group said.
Twenty-one civilians and three army deserters were killed at the hands of security forces, five of them under torture, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.
The LCC said nine people were killed in the central province of Hama, ten in the flashpoint central province of Homs, two in the northern province of 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...
, two in the northwestern province of Idlib and one in the coastal province of Latakia.
Elsewhere, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse students demonstrating in Daraya, in Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
province, and residents of a town in Idlib province were on strike to protest their living conditions.
"Four non-combatants were killed in Kafr Nbuda by security forces who attacked the town, while festivities are underway between the regular army and deserters," the Britannia-based group said in a statement received by Agence La Belle France Presse.
Referring to the general strike in Maaret al-Noman, the Observatory said "electricity is cut in the town for more than 12 hours a day. There is a shortage of fuel, and Internet and communications are also cut, while the streets are full of barricades."
Separately, state news agency SANA said an army colonel and two soldiers were killed and two others maimed by a "terrorist group" as they were traveling to join their units outside Damascus.
And another colonel was captured by an "armed terrorist group" as he headed to a military airport in Homs province.
On Tuesday, 22 civilians died around the country in the ongoing regime crackdown on protesters.
The United Nations
...what started out as a a diplomatic initiative, now trying to edge its way into legislative, judicial, and executive areas...
estimated last month that more than 5,000 people had been killed in the crackdown on anti-regime protests that erupted in March, and many of them have been bumped off during street protests.
Damascus accuses "armed terrorist gangs" of fomenting the bloodshed.
In a speech on Tuesday, his first public appearance in months, Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
vowed to crush "terrorism" with an iron fist.
"Regional and international parties who are trying to destabilize Syria can no longer falsify the facts and events," the embattled leader said in the nearly two-hour speech.
That prompted opposition movements to accuse him of pushing Syria toward civil war and world powers to accuse him of trying to shift the blame for the 10 months of bloodletting in the protests against his regime.