Damascus,May 08:Syrian forces raided the hotbed city of Banias today and killed at least three protesters, activists said as President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents proposed he offer elections to end the crisis.
Activists spoke of dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles entering Banias, on the northwestern Mediterranean coast, from three directions as electricity and communications were cut. Tanks also encircled the nearby town of Baida.
The rights activists said residents of Banias formed human chains in a desperate bid to halt the military operation when it began around dawn.
Heavy gunfire was heard in Banias’s south, a seaside sector of the city where most of the protesters live, while navy boats patrolled offshore, the activists said,reached by telephone from Nicosia.
A human rights activist said later security forces killed three women who were among around 150 people demonstrating on a road outside Banias today calling for the release of people who had been arrested.
“Members of the security forces asked them to leave and, when they refused to do so, they opened fire killing three of them and wounding five others who were hospitalised,” the activist told AFP.
The military confirmed it conducted an operation in Banias.
“Army units and security forces today pursued members of terrorist groups in and around Banias and neighbourhoods of (the southern flashpoint town of) Daraa to restore security and stability,” said the military official.
“They arrested people and seized a quantity of weapons that these groups have used to attack the army and citizens and scare people.”
An Internet-based Syrian opposition group, meanwhile, proposed that Syria’s embattled president offer to hold elections in six months in order to bring to an end the crisis that has engulfed his country for more than seven
weeks.
The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook group that has been a motor of the protests, urged Assad to “stop shooting at demonstrators, allow peaceful demonstrations…release all political prisoners, allow political pluralism and free elections in six months.”
In a statement posted online, it told Assad he could be the “pride of contemporary Syria” if he transformed Syria “from a dictatorship to a democracy.”
“The Syrians will be grateful and it is possible to do.”
The group had called for Friday’s “Day of Defiance” demonstrations, which saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets in Syria calling for democratic reforms.
Rights groups said 26 protesters were shot dead by security forces on Friday while the military said 10 soldiers and policemen were killed in Homs by “armed terrorist groups.”
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