Demonstrations in  Baida town Syrian security forces have arrested 200 residents in a coastal town as unprecedented challenges to the rule of President Bashar Al Assad continued to spread, a human rights lawyer told International agencies on Wednesday.
"They brought in a television crew and forced the men they arrested to shout 'We sacrifice our blood and our soul for you, Bashar' while filming them," the lawyer, who was in contact with residents in Baida, 10 km south of the Mediterranean seaside city of Baniyas. The lawyer, who did not want to be further identified, said the events occurred on Tuesday.
Assad, who tried to position Syria as a self-declared champion of "resistance" to Israel while seeking peace with the Jewish state and accepting offers for rehabilitation in the West, has responded to the protests with a blend of force - his security forces have killed unarmed protesters - and promises of reform.
But the mass public demands for freedom and an end to corruption, now in their fourth week, have yet to abate. Syrian secret police and soldiers surrounded Baida on Tuesday, entered homes, arresting  any men up to 60 years of age.
Gunfire was heard earlier in the day and one man was killed, the activists said. They said Baida was targeted because its residents participated in a demonstration in Baniyas last week in which protesters shouted: "The people want the overthrow of the regime" - the rallying cry of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts.
One activist said some residents of Baida had weapons and it appeared that an armed confrontation had erupted. But Sheikh Anas Airout, an Imam in nearby Baniyas, said Baida residents were largely unarmed and that they were paying the price for their non-violent quest for freedom.
Baniyas, home to one of Syria's two oil refineries, remained sealed off overnight and around 20 tanks were stationed near the northern and southern entrances of the city.
The protests against 48 years of autocratic Baath Party rule erupted in the southern city of Daraa near the border with Jordan, expanding to the suburbs of the capital Damascus, the northeast, the coast and areas in between.
But with heavy secret police presence and Al Assad maintaining backing from the merchant class and preachers on the state payroll, the protests have not spread to Damascus proper and to Syria's second city Aleppo.
This has robbed the demonstrations of the critical mass they attained in Tunisia and Egypt. Authorities blame armed groups and "infiltrators" for the violence, in which they say civilians, soldiers and police also have been killed.
Syria's main human rights movement said the death toll from pro-democracy protests had reached 200 and urged the Arab League to impose sanctions on the ruling hierarchy.
"Syria's uprising is screaming with 200 martyrs, hundreds of injured and a similar number of arrests," the Damascus Declaration group said in a letter sent on Monday to the secretary general of the Arab League.