Sky news
written by Staff
Wednesday July 6, 2011
The attacks are reported to have taken place in two districts of the city north of the Orontes River.
The Syrian regime has come under further pressure after an Amnesty International report said security forces may have committed crimes against humanity.
Troops are also believed to have raided towns to the northwest of Hama near the border with Turkey, and authorities have intensified a campaign of arrests that has resulted in the detention of at least 500 people across Syria in the last few days, rights campaigners said.
Tanks have surrounded the city, days after it witnessed some of the biggest protests against the president's rule since the unrest erupted in March.
Hama was the site of one of the Middle East's most notorious massacres in 1982.
Its residents fear history may be about to repeat itself 30 years after tens of thousands were killed when Syrian artillery shelled the city after an Islamist uprising.
Hama faces a deadly backlash for daring to take on the Assad regime which had appeared to have lost control of the city last week.
Syrian officials have insisted in recent weeks that peaceful protests are in fact allowed in the country.
But it sent armoured columns and infantry into Hama to suppress what appeared to have been entirely non-violent mass demonstrations.
Video posted to Youtube, not verified by Sky News, claims to show troops entering Hama
Residents have been burning tyres and setting up barriers to keep the military out, Rami Abdul-Rahman, the London-based director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
"There is an open civil defiance in Hama.
"There is a kind of determination not to submit to any tanks or military vehicles," Abdul-Rahman said, citing accounts from doctors and witnesses at the scene.
The all-out military assault comes just five days before a regime-sponsored summit which was called to discuss reform plans.
The Assad government faces a dilemma with Hama.
It can either allow it to remain a focus of mass protest on the main highway between the country's two largest cities.
Or it can risk a repeat of 1982's atrocity - and further international condemnation.
In 14 weeks of protests, Syrian security forces have killed many hundreds of their own people, according to multiple sources inside the country.
Amnesty International says the actions of Assad's forces during the siege of Talkalakh in May could amount to crimes against humanity.
Activists claim 36 people were killed during the siege in the town which lasted just under a week.
The charity says it spoke to more than 50 people and heard witness reports of aribitary detention, torture and at least nine deaths in custody.
There are allegations Syrian forces firing at ambulances transporting the wounded and families trying to escape the violence.
The group interviewed refugees who had fled across the nearby border with Lebanon and spoke via telephone to those who remained there.
Amnesty wants the UN to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court:
"The accounts we have heard from witnesses to events paint a deeply disturbing picture of systematic, targeted abuses to crush dissent," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director.
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