Asad\'s army arrests all men over 15 in Daraa

Syrian anti-government protesters shout slogans as they demonstrate . Massacre of the Martyrs Syria \'washes pools of blood\' from the streets as army arrests all men over 15 in rebel city. Syrian security forces have carried out another wave of arrests in Daraa and have been detaining all men over 15, residents said today.
Human rights activists say Syrian secret police have arrested opposition leader Riad Seif, at a demonstration in central Damascus, his daughter and human rights campaigners said.
 \"My father was shoved into a bus with other protesters who were detained during the demonstration near the Al Hassan mosque,\" Jumana Seif said.
 The news followed reports that thousands of Kurds are demonstrating in Eastern Syria demanding political freedom while maintaining national unity, a senior Kurd source said.
 Witnesses said that dozens of Syrian protesters ran through streets of the Damascus district of Midan after midday prayers on Friday calling for the overthrow of President Bashar Al Assad.
Authorities moved into central Syria and coastal areas before Friday prayers in a test of will for demonstrators determined to maintain protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Further protests across the country were expected today as part of the nation\'s Martyr\'s Day.
Assad\'s troops have deployed in force in the Mediterranean protest hub of Banias and Ar-Rastan, another hotbed, activists said, after pulling out of the flashpoint town of Daraa in the south following a 10-day lockdown.
Dozens of armoured vehicles, including tanks, and troop reinforcements were deployed near Banias, an activist told AFP on Thursday, contacted by telephone.
\"It looks like they are preparing to attack the town, like they did in Daraa,\" he said.
Hundreds of troops withdrew from Daraa on Thursday, and the military said the operation carried on overnight into Friday.
\"Throughout the night, they withdrew from Daraa and this is continuing today. The troops\' departure is gradual,\" General Riad Haddad, the military\'s political department chief, told AFP.
The army had rolled into the town on April 25 to quell the demonstrations that began three days after the unprecedented protest movement was born in Damascus on March 15.
Haddad said 600 people were arrested in Daraa during the 10-day operation.

On Wednesday, an activist had said around 100 tanks and troop transports converged on Ar-Rastan, near the central city of Homs.
\"Reinforcements continue to mass at the northern entrance to Ar-Rastan and, according to our estimates, there must be 100 tanks and troop transports on the highway between Homs and Hama,\" the activist said
As on Fridays for the past seven weeks, activists have vowed to stage protests against the regime of President Assad across the nation after the main weekly Muslim prayers.
The Syrian Revolution 2011, a Facebook group that has been a driving force of the protests, called for the \"Day of Defiance\" demonstrations, saying \"Liberty is close.\"
The protests broke out in Damascus on March 15, inspired by Arab world uprisings that have already toppled long-time autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt this year.
They were promptly put down in the Syrian capital but moved to other centres including Daraa, Banias, Homs, nearby Hama, Aleppo in the north, and the majority Kurdish northeastern city of Qamishli.
Human rights groups say the crackdown has killed more than 600 people, while 8,000 people have been jailed or gone missing.
Syria\'s embattled government called upon citizens to refrain from taking part in the protests, in a statement carried by the state news agency SANA on Friday.
\"The interior ministry calls upon citizens... to contribute significantly to stability and security... by refraining from engaging in any rallies or demonstrations or sit-ins,\" said the statement.
It warned the laws of Syria would be enforced to ensure security for citizens and the country\'s stability.

In a concession that failed to quell the protest movement, Assad decreed an end to five decades of emergency rule on April 21, but his forces have continued to use deadly force and carry out arbitrary detentions.
In the wake of the troop pullout from Daraa on Thursday, residents stepped out of their houses for the first time, most of them mute with fear as reporters toured the town accompanied by security forces.
Others, however, recounted the official version of events.
\"It was terror. There were hooded men with guns. They set up roadblocks and were taking passers-by off the streets. It was like a state within a state but we\'ve been set free,\" said Abu Mohammed, a shopkeeper.

In New York, the United Nations said it would send a mission to Daraa after getting the go-ahead from Syrian authorities for a humanitarian team to enter the town.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama\'s administration defended itself against charges in Congress it has been too soft with the Syrian government over its deadly crackdown.
At the same time on a campus where even a whisper of politics risks jail time and where loyalty to the ruling party is rewarded with better grades and the best dorms, the small gathering of medical students, holding olive branches and flowers and dressed in bright white coats, were staging something truly revolutionary: A rally against the regime.
 “God, Syria, freedom only,” chanted the group of some 150 budding doctors, their voices reverberating around the faculty buildings of Damascus University.
 Outraged at the killing of more than a dozen protesters in the central city of Homs in just two days and with the army set to move into Daraa, the southern city where Syria’s popular uprising began, the students had dared the previously unthinkable.
 The regime’s reaction was the same on campus as off it Violent repression.
 \"God, Syria, Bashar only,” came the rhythmic chant, as around 500 members of the Students’ Union, run by the ruling Baath Party, slowly descended on the protesters. The call for freedom was drowned out.
 “We tried to ignore them at first, but they kept coming closer,” said Mohammad, 22, one of the student protesters. “Then they began to beat us with wooden sticks and their belts.”
 “We used to be afraid of the secret police, but now we are afraid of our friends who sit next to us or live with us in the same dorms,” said Mohammed, who like other students interviewed for this article declined to publish his full name, fearing retribution for speaking out. “It is a shame.”
But in the one-party police state of the Assad dynasty, the campuses of Syria’s universities have long been places for smothering dissent, rewarding loyalty to the regime and for gathering intelligence on students as much as educating them.
 “All new ideas come from the youth and therefore the university environment is even more controlled than the rest of Syria,” said Fadi, a 25-year-old student at Damascus University.
 Students’ Union members were joined on campus by hundreds of plain clothes secret police patrolling an empty and eerily quiet Damascus University, according to several current students.
“Now there are more than 300 secret police patrolling inside the university alongside members of the Students’ Union,” said Ahmad, a student at Damascus University. “They swear at people and if anyone answers back they will be beaten.”