LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِApril 26/2011

Biblical Event Of The Day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 6:1-6.16-18. (But) take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.  

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Syria: World Should Impose Sanctions on Leadership//Human Rights Watch/April 24/11
Easter Attacks Near Churches Rattle Christians As Spike in Iraq Violence Continues/By Aaron C. Davis/ April 24/11
Robert Fisk: Shifting blame to Lebanon may be the method in Assad's madness/By: Robert Fisk/April 25/11

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for April 25/11
Bahrain Accuses Hizbullah of Working to Topple its Regime/Naharnet
25 Killed as Syrian Troops Storm Daraa, Douma/Naharnet
At least 18 dead in fresh violence against Syria protesters/Haaretz
Syria seals border with Jordan: Amman/AFP
Tanks in Syria's Deraa city, bodies in street: witness/Reuters
With 300 protesters dead, group seeks sanctions against Syria/Los Angeles Times
Gadhafi Forces Shell Misrata; Further Unrest in Yemen, Syria/VOA
US Senators Urge Non-Military Intervention in Syria/VOA
Editorials in Arab newspapers comment on Libya and Syria/The National
Yemen and Syria put credibility of the international community on the line/AlArabiya
More Syrians Missing, Hinting at Wider Crackdown/New York Times
'Use of violence' in Syria prompts Canadian response/Globe & Mail
Turkey joins US, EU in calls to Syria to stop killings/Hurriyet Daily News
Bloodshed widens cracks in Syrian regime/Sydney Morning Herald
Australians urged to leave Syria amid 'killing frenzy'/ABC
Syria rounds up regime opponents/Khaleej Times
Maqdah Denies New Fundamentalist Groups Infiltrated Ain el-Hilweh/Naharnet
Estonian Video Likely to Have Been Shot in Bekaa/Naharnet
Robert Fisk: Developments in Syria May Soon Pose Danger to Lebanon/Naharnet
Awdeh: We're Incapable of Forming the Cabinet because Each Team is after its Share/Naharnet
Suleiman Says Cabinet Deadlock Over 'Demands' Not 'Obstacles'/Naharnet
Al-Rahi: Lebanon Should Rise from Obstruction of Constitutional Institutions/Naharnet
Qaouq: New Govt Imminent, March 14 Wants to Foil Miqati's Mission at Any Cost/Naharnet
Illegal Bldg on al-Ouzai Sunni Waqf Land Removed after AMAL Efforts/Naharnet
Sappers Defuse Explosives Placed Under General Security Inspector's Vehicle/Naharnet
Saqr Says Syria Taking Advantage of his Friendships to Spread Lies About his Arrest/Naharnet
Hassan Khalil: Any Government Lineup that Advocates Backwardness Will Weaken the State/Naharnet

Bahrain Accuses Hizbullah of Working to Topple its Regime
Naharnet/Bahrain accused Hizbullah of attempting to topple its regime, reported the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. It made its accusation in a report sent to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week. It said that Hizbullah is training the opposition in camps in Lebanon and Iran.Bahrain also accused Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and other party members of personally conspiring with the Shiite opposition to defy the ruling family. The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. intelligence as saying that it had tracked contacts between Iran, Hizbullah, and the Bahraini opposition since the start of the protests in the Gulf state in February. Furthermore, Bahrain called on the United Nations to work on curbing Hizbullah's activity in the Gulf. Beirut, 25 Apr 11, 09:18

Hassan Khalil: Any Government Lineup that Advocates Backwardness Will Weaken the State
Naharnet/Speaker Nabih Berri's advisor, MP Ali Hassan Khalil, stressed on Monday the need to adopt political rhetoric that would be capable of confronting the sectarian mentality in Lebanon "because sectarianism is complicating the lives of the people." He said: "The sectarian system is backwards, forcing the people to lead a political life of backwardness."
"Any government lineup that advocates backwardness will undoubtedly weaken the state," he noted. "Protecting the nation and the safety of its people cannot be achieved in the current division witnessed in Lebanon," he continued. Khalil added: "Only national unity can fortify the country against the Israeli agenda."
Explaining Berri's proposal to form a wide national front in Lebanon, the MP said: "He meant that this front would break all barriers between the political powers and eliminate the divisions among the Lebanese." "The new majority represents political unity and we want it to harbor other powers that share its national principles and political stands," he noted.
Addressing the government formation process, Khalil stated: "The delay is no longer acceptable and we call for the formation of a salvation government that would be charged with reviewing the national rhetoric in Lebanon and restarting the national dialogue." Regarding the public property construction violations, he remarked: "Some sides want to portray our people as outlaws." Beirut, 25 Apr 11, 09:18

Jordan Says Syria Seals Border with Kingdom, Damascus Denies
Naharnet/Syria on Monday sealed off its border with Jordan, the kingdom's information minister Taher Adwan said, hours after troops backed by tanks swept into the Syrian southern flashpoint town Daraa. "Syria closed its land borders with Jordan. The Syrian decision is related to the internal situation in Syria," Adwan told the state-run Petra news agency.
"We hope movement at the border goes back to normal soon." Thousands of Syrian troops backed by tanks swept into Daraa, around five kilometers from the Jordanian frontier, firing on residents and leaving bodies lying in the streets, activists and witnesses said. One witness reported seeing five bodies in a car that had been riddled with bullets. "We tried to cross into Syria but the Syrian authorities closed the only two border posts with Jordan, Daraa and Naseeb," a Jordanian witness in Amman told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another witness said he could "see Syrian tanks, armored cars and troops blocking the road to Daraa." However, Syria's official news agency SANA cited the director general of customs, Mustafa Bukai, as denying the border had been sealed. "All the border posts with our neighbors, including Jordan, are open. The movement of cars and goods is normal," he said. The military assault comes as Syria is engulfed in anti-regime protests and amid a crackdown on demonstrators across the country in which according to rights activists and witnesses more than 135 people have been killed and scores arrested since Friday.(AFP) Beirut, 25 Apr 11, 14:09

Five Syrian Protesters 'Shot Dead' in Daraa
Naharnet/Syrian security forces fired on anti-regime protesters near a mosque on Wednesday, killing five and wounding scores, rights activists said as the government blamed a "gang" for the violence. Hundreds of people had gathered at the Omari mosque, the focus of rallies in the flashpoint southern town of Daraa since Friday, to prevent police from storming it. Security had been beefed up after they set up tents to camp there. "Security forces fired live bullets and teargas on protestors" staging a sit-in near the mosque, a rights activist said, adding "They cut off electricity and the firing started." The official SANA news agency said the attack by an "armed gang" also killed a security force member. "An armed gang after midnight attacked a medical team in an ambulance at the Omari mosque, killing a doctor, a paramedic and the driver," SANA reported. "The security forces that were near the area intervened, hitting some and arresting others," it added, without elaborating. Syria, which is still under a 1963 emergency law banning demonstrations, has witnessed a string of small but unprecedented protests demanding the end of the ruling Assad regime for one week now. Daraa, a town about 100 kilometers south of Damascus and home to large tribal families, has been the focal point of the rallies, the latest in a string of uprisings against long-running autocratic regimes in the Arab world. An Agence France Presse photographer and videographer in Daraa said their car was stopped in the old town and their equipment confiscated. After being taken in for questioning, they received an apology from the authorities, but had still not received their equipment back.
The photographer said soldiers were manning checkpoints at all entries to the town and were cross-checking the identity cards of travelers with a list of names they had compiled.
The demonstrations also spilled into the nearby towns of Jassem and Noa, where eyewitnesses said more than 2,000 protesters gathered for a rally before being quickly dispersed by security forces. Six people had been killed earlier in a security crackdown on the Daraa demonstrations, including an 11-year-old boy who died Monday after inhaling tear gas the day before. Syrian authorities on Tuesday also detained writer Louai Hussein, one day after he posted a petition online demanding the right to freedom of expression, a London-based rights group reported. "Syrian security forces broke into the home of Louai Hussein on the outskirts of Damascus on Tuesday... and his whereabouts remain unknown," said a statement by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "He had posted a petition online the day before to demand the right to peaceful protests and freedom of expression," the statement added.
Hussein, 51, is a former political prisoner who was jailed from 1984 to 1991 over his activism with the communist party in Syria, the group said.
Organizations including Human Rights Watch have accused the Syrian authorities of detaining dozens of activists at a rally outside the interior ministry last week.
The crackdown on protesters also earned a harsh rebuke on Tuesday from the European Union, which condemned the authorities' handling of the rallies as "unacceptable."
EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement that the 27-nation bloc "strongly condemns the violent repression, including through the use of live ammunition, of peaceful protests in various locations across Syria." The crackdown has resulted in the deaths of several demonstrators, wounded persons and arbitrary detentions "which is unacceptable", the statement said. It also called for a Syrian interior ministry investigative committee to ensure those responsible for the death and injury of peaceful protesters in Daraa to be held accountable.(AFP) Beirut, 23 Mar 11, 07:39

With 300 Protesters Dead, Group Seeks Sanctions Against Syria
By Meris Lutz/Los Angeles Times
4-24-2011 /A major human-rights organization took the unusual step Sunday of calling for international sanctions against Syrian government officials for their alleged role in the killings of hundreds of peaceful protesters during weeks of anti-government rallies. New York-based Human Rights Watch also called for an independent investigation into the killings of the protesters by Syrian security forces after a weekend escalation in the government's ongoing crackdown against the nascent democracy movement.
Plainclothes and uniformed Syrian security officers killed 120 people in two days, bringing the number of civilians killed in weeks of unrest to more than 300, according to Syrian human-rights activists. On Sunday afternoon, there were reports of renewed gunfire and at least three people killed in the coastal city of Jableh, according to Al Jazeera and witnesses.
Meanwhile, activists reported hundreds of people missing and thought to be in detention, as well as midnight raids Saturday on homes in several suburbs of Damascus and in cities across the nation. "All the areas around Damascus have been surrounded," said an activist reached by telephone. "If two people are in a car, they search the whole car. You have to show identification just to get in and out." The arrests and searches have taken place, activists say, despite the lifting Thursday of a decades-old emergency law curtailing civil liberties, canceled in an effort by the government to mollify its critics at home and abroad. The escalating bloodshed and violations of human rights have spurred world leaders including President Obama to condemn the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled the country for more than 40 years, and even prompted Damascus allies such as Russia and Turkey to voice concern.
The U.S. currently restricts trade with Syria due to its alleged support for militant groups and interference in neighboring Lebanon rather than human-rights violations.
Nadim Houry, a Beirut researcher who monitors Syria for Human Rights Watch, said international efforts until now had had no effect on the Assad government's conduct.
"We've seen all these condemnations from the European Union and the U.S., but the problem with these condemnations is they are not having any impact on the behavior of the security forces," Houry said. "It is important for the international community to send a clear signal to authorities ordering protesters to be shot that the world is watching and will back up these statements with sanctions and travel bans."
Houry suggested sanctions that would ban travel for Syrian officials found to have ordered rights violations and freezing any assets they have abroad. Security forces opened fire in 14 towns and cities across the country over the weekend, according to Houry. Syrian security forces continued to pressure the protest movement on Sunday despite small signs of cracks within the ruling elite, including the resignation of more local government officials from the restive southern city of Dara. At least seven officials had resigned as of Sunday afternoon, including two members of parliament, a state-appointed cleric, the head of the Islamic endowments in Dara and several local councilmen.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Cabinet also approved laws reducing interest on home loans, providing electricity to water-well pumps and expanding subsidies and food packages to those affected by an ongoing drought, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported. A witness in Zabadani outside Damascus said security forces had surrounded the town, where several hundred local residents were holding an open sit-in in a central square they had renamed "Martyrs Square" and demanding the release of about 100 missing people assumed to be in state custody.
"We are asking for our rights," said the witness, who was reached by telephone. "We are asking for freedom and change. The ruler cannot oppress his people like this."
Funerals were held in towns and cities around the country. A large funeral for four people was held in the Damascene suburb of Duma without incident on Sunday though security forces had surrounded the area and cut off phone service since Saturday, a witness said. Syrian state media have blamed anonymous "armed groups" and foreign infiltrators for much of the recent violence, focusing on the alleged targeting of police and security forces. State news reported Sunday that seven security personnel were killed when gunmen attacked a checkpoint outside Dara.


Easter Attacks Near Churches Rattle Christians As Spike in Iraq Violence Continues
By Aaron C. Davis/Washington Post
 4-24-2011 /Assyrian International News Agency
BAGHDAD -- An improvised explosive device detonated near a church and a firefight broke out in front of another here Easter Sunday, further raising safety concerns for Iraq's besieged Christian community, even as it remained unclear if worshipers or police were the primary targets of the attacks.
Late Sunday, a car packed with explosives detonated near an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Baghdad. In the first hour after the attack, casualty estimates differed drastically, with one government official saying seven had been injured and witnesses describing a far more macabre scene with as many as 15 killed.
Iraqi police said the bomb earlier in the day outside a Baghdad church was situated to explode when an Iraqi police pick-up truck pulled away from Sacred Heart church, which it did after all parishioners had been cleared from the area following Easter Mass.
In a second attack not far away, four Iraqi police officers were wounded in a firefight with gunmen outside Mary the Virgin Catholic Church as congregants huddled inside.
"Thank God, no one was hurt, every follower member made it out safely," said one church member who said Mass had begun when the gunfire erupted. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his personal safety.
At least two Iraqi policemen and two passersby suffered shrapnel wounds from the bomb outside Sacred Heart in Baghdad's relatively upscale Karrada neighborhood. But a cameraman for Reuters reported seeing three injured officers and four injured civilians at a Baghdad hospital. Four Iraqi police officers suffered gunshot wounds in the firefight.
The violence came despite a stifling security presence in the Iraqi capital Sunday, following a string of recent attacks against Iraqi police, army officers and government workers.
There were also mixed reports about whether Iraqi security forces suffered additional casualties Sunday. Iraqi government sources said as many as 10 police officers were killed across the country, but the Ministry of Interior's Baghdad office reported no deaths.
Regardless, the blast sent another shockwave through Baghdad's Christian community. Last fall, 51 members of another Catholic congregation and seven Iraqi security officers were killed when gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Church during a Sunday Mass, and later detonated suicide vests as Iraqi police closed in during a rescue mission.
Around Christmas, a series of about 10 coordinated bombings in and around Baghdad targeted homes of Christians, killing at least three and wounding more than a dozen more.
On Saturday night, Iraq's state-run television broadcast an evening Mass, allowing many Christians in the Iraqi capital to worship from home rather than venture out in public.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled Baghdad and other southern portions of the country, including the Biblical area known as Babylon that is dominated by Shia Muslims.
Many have left Iraq or settled in and around the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan region, home to the purported tombs of the Jonah and the prophet Daniel.
Estimates of the number of Christians remaining in Iraq range from just under 900,000 to little more than a half million.
In one hopeful sign for Christians in Baghdad, a church leader at Our Lady of Salvation, which is now surrounded by concrete blast walls and razor-wire, said so many people arrived for services there Sunday that the church had to hold three services.
"It was more than before," the official said, referring to the size of the congregation before last fall's massacre.
Copyright (C) 2011, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

Iraqi Christians Mark a Restrained Easter
4-24-2011
By Jane Arraf/Christian Science Monitor
Baghdad -- Iraqi Christians marked a restrained Easter weekend as fear of attacks kept many from openly celebrating their most sacred day of the year and church officials urged them not to give up on the country. At Our Lady of Salvation, where gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least 52 worshipers and guards in October, the church was tightly locked. Only the arch and cross on the church roof were visible behind the 10-foot high concrete walls that have turned most churches in Baghdad into miniature fortresses.
"Our churches have become like prisons," says Monsignor Pious Casha, a senior religious official who arrived at Our Lady of Salvation moments after Iraqi special forces stormed the church during the siege last fall. "The barbed wire and concrete are new. Yes, they protect the churches, but they make the worshipers spiritually constrained."
MONITOR QUIZ: Weekly news quiz: April 17-23
Iraqi police guarding Our Lady of Salvation said the doors would be opened only moments before the Saturday evening mass. "It's more like a museum than a church," said one of the police officers. He said they tried to keep out those who were simply curious or, he implied, there to gather intelligence.
Christians hit especially hard by violence
Like other minorities, Christians, because of their small numbers, have been disproportionately hit by violence. Many blame the United States for the turmoil that replaced the relative security they enjoyed even under Saddam Hussein's repressive regime. Some of those who remain are a testament to resiliency.
Vivienne Matti was among the faithful trickling into St. Joseph's Catholic church in the relatively affluent neighborhood of Mansour. Her husband and three children were killed four months after Saddam was toppled when American soldiers, thinking they were a threat, fired on their vehicle.
Matti's youngest child, six years old, had been seated in her lap.
"I've seen death myself. I'm not afraid anymore," she said.
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Mass exodus of Christians from Iraq
Monsignor Casha, who officiates at St. Joseph's church, said it had been packed on Palm Sunday a week ago, with families doing a procession through the streets around the church.
He said, however, that of the 1,300 families who had been in his parish in 2003, only 500 remained, with a few more leaving every week, most of them to Turkey.
"It is a disease of emigration," he says. With the traditional escape routes closing as more countries in the Middle East are engulfed by unrest, Turkey has become the default route for Christians fleeing Iraq.
Of more than 1 million Christians in Iraq before 2003, there are believed to be only about 650,000 left. The exodus has raised doubts about the future of Christianity in the region where it first took root.
RELATED: In Iraq, Christians fear they could be wiped out -- like Jews before them
Casha said his Easter Sunday sermon would urge parishioners to remain in Iraq.
"Let's stay here and try to build our country -- everything old is finished," he said.
He said there had been no recent attacks specifically targeting Christians after a wave of them claimed by Al Qaeda early this year. But there continued to be threats, he said, pulling out of his desk drawer bullets wrapped in black tape that had been placed on the doorstep of a Christian family recently as a warning.
"I think they wanted the house," he said.
'I ask you to be patient'
In Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul, the site of biblical Ninevah and the burial place of the prophet Jonah, many Christians were watching mass on television rather than risking public celebrations.
Iraq's state-run television broadcast evening mass live from the half-filled Virgin Mary church in Karrada.
"I ask you to be patient because the coming days will not be easy," Cardinal Emmanuel Delly, the patriarch of Babylon, told the small congregation.



Shifting blame to Lebanon may be the method in Assad's madness
Robert Fisk/The Independenct
Many Arabs were appalled that Mr Obama would apparently try to make cheap propaganda over the tragedy
Monday, 25 April 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-shifting-blame-to-lebanon-may-be-the-method-in-assads-madness-2274436.html
President Bashar al-Assad's war with his own Syrian people is moving perilously close to Lebanon. Indeed, over the past few days, Lebanese opposition leaders have been voicing their suspicions that the Baathist regime in Damascus – in an attempt to distract attention away from the Syrian popular uprising – is deliberately stirring sectarian tensions in a country which has only just commemorated the 36th anniversary of its own terrifying 15-year civil war, which cost 150,000 lives.
In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, rival pro- and anti-Assad demonstrations were held and the Lebanese Government flooded the streets with troops and internal security force members. Tripoli contains a sizeable community of Alawites, the Shia offshoot to which the Assad family belongs, most of them with close family ties to Syria.
Rather more disturbing was that the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon – the only serious militia in the country and Israel's principal enemy here – accepted Syria's claim that the opposition Lebanese Future Movement MP Jamal Jarrah was involved in what the Assad regime calls the "armed insurgency" in the Syrian cities of Deraa, Latakia, Banias and Aleppo. Syrian television has shown interviews with two extremely frightened men it said had been caught with weapons and one of whom had, it said, confessed to bringing money and guns into Syria on the instructions of Jarrah. The MP and his party have indignantly denied the claim, but a Hezbollah official now says that Jarrah should be brought before Lebanese justice.
So, too, has the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, who visited the Lebanese foreign ministry – obviously on orders from Damascus – to demand that Jarrah be brought to justice. The Future Movement, whose leader, Saad Hariri, remains the caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister in the continued absence of a government in the country, indignantly protested that Ali's move was Syrian interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon. Hezbollah has been busily praising – like its Iranian sponsors – the Egyptian revolution while condemning the demonstrations inside Syria.
So far, most Lebanese have been very careful to distance themselves from the Syrian imbroglio. The Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, wrote in his weekly editorial in Al-Anba last week that because of his "attachment to Syria and its people and its stability", he believed that the authorities in Damascus should "undertake an internal restructuring of their security forces" as other Arab states have already done.
He has a point, of course. For it is now all too clear that the enormous hatred of the brutal mukhabarat secret police in Syria lies at the heart of the protests. On Friday, the security police opened live fire at protesters in 14 separate towns and cities across Syria – clearly a decision taken at the highest level of the regime.
Among those suppressing the protests were soldiers from the infamous Fourth Unit of the Syrian army, which answers directly not to the chief of staff but to President Assad's younger brother Maher, whose name appears on the banners of many of the protesters.
Human Rights Watch, which talks from Beirut directly to eyewitnesses of the massacres all over Syria, now has the names of exactly 76 protesters killed – or murdered – by the security forces over Friday and Saturday. Based on online collaboration, Syrian human rights activists have 112 names. Clearly about 100, including young children, died in a 48-hour period, but some bodies were not taken to hospitals where the state security police were noting their names and insisting that their burials should be private.
It is an odd phenomenon of all the Middle East revolutions that security police gun down protesters – and then gun down mourners at the funerals, and then shoot dead mourners at the funerals of those mourners shot dead the previous day.
According to Human Rights Watch's senior researcher on Syria, Nadim Houry, the death toll since the demonstrations began now totals 300. "It's clear that the Syrian security forces are ready to go very far to quell this," he says. "As far as this goes – and the other revolutions – it's a blast from the past. These regimes don't learn from each other – the protesters do. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. The language of the regimes – of foreign plots – is falling apart; people don't buy it any more."
Ironically, President Obama was the only international leader to suggest a "foreign hand" in Syria's crisis. He said that Iran was supporting the "outrageous" behaviour of the Syrian authorities.
Many Arabs were appalled that Mr Obama would apparently try to make cheap propaganda over the tragedy – there is, in fact, not the slightest evidence that Iran has been actively involved with the events in Syria – when he might have been dignified enough to have sent his sympathy to the mourners and told the protesters that America was with them.
But as Nadim Houry says, many regimes in the region – the Saudis, the Iranians, the Israelis and Turkey, for example – will be happy if Bashar Assad survives. "The real problem is, where do you go from here?" he says. "The regime has drawn its 'line in the sand'. But it did learn from other Arab revolutions to keep crowds from the centre of cities.
"In Homs, protesters pitched tents in the central square but the security forces arrived en masse and broke them up, tore down the tents and washed the streets overnight. A man living next to the Homs square told me that 'When the sun rose, it was almost as if no one had been there the night before'.
"Then on Friday, when people began to walk into Damascus, they were simply shot down in the suburbs. Only in Banias on Friday did the Syrian mukhabarat leave the city – and the protests there passed off peacefully."