Forty-one people were killed in "Friday of Freedom" protests tiffany jewelry sale across Syria that were broken up by security forces using live ammunition, a human rights group said Saturday.
The day was dubbed "Friday of Freedom Prisoners," in honor of those jailed during months of protests called for political reform and on President Bashar Assad to step down.
In this citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network, Syrian anti-government protesters hang a banner in Arabic that reads 'thank you Al-Jazeera and Shaam News Network,' during a rally in
The death toll was initially given as 27 by activists documenting the protests, but on Saturday, National Organization for Human Rights said 27 people were killed in the capital Damascus and its suburbs alone, with more killed in the central city of Homs, Idlib in the north, and Daraa in the south.
The official SANA news agency meanwhile reported that 12 civilians and security personnel were killed by armed groups "who opened fire on gatherings of civilians following the Friday prayers."
Syrian forces continued to crack down on protesters Saturday, killing one and wounded five when they opened fire at pro-democracy demonstrators in the eastern border town of Albu Kamal near Iraq's Sunni heartland, activists and residents said.
"Military Intelligence patrols fired on a crowd at the main square. More people are now gathering there. This is a tribal province and inhabitants do not take killings lightly," said one of the activists, who gave the name of the dead protester as Hayan Mohsen al-Bahr.
The National Organization for Human Rights, in a statement said: "We declare our full support for Syrians to the right to assembly, to peaceful tiffany earrings protests expressing their legitimate demands."
It urged the government to quickly to implement these demands and "held authorities responsible to violence and bloodshed in the streets."
More than 1 million Syrians participated in Friday's protests, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. The figure could not be independently verified.
Since mid-March, more than 1,440 civilians and 350 members of security have been killed by security forces during unprecedented protests, human rights groups say.
But the government disputes the figures and blames "armed thugs" and foreign conspirators for the unrest.
London's Times newspaper reported Saturday
'A serious arms build-up'
London’s Times newspaper reported Saturday that the Assad regime is "engaged in a serious arms build-up," in the words of an Israeli intelligence official quoted by the newspaper.
The missiles acquired by Hezbollah “bring all of Israel, Jordan and large parts of Turkey within Hezbollah's range,” according to other western officials also cited by the Times.
The Syrian Embassy in London responded to the report, saying they had no knowledge of the reports claims, according to an Army Radio report.
In June, French newspaper Le Figaro reported tiffany necklaces that Hezbollah had moved hundreds of missiles from storage sites in Syria to bases in eastern Lebanon.
According to Le Figaro, Hezbollah moved the missiles due to the concern that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad will fall and that a new Syrian government will cut off ties with Hezbollah.
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