Tens of thousands of protesters calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad’s regime on July 29 took to the streets throughout Syria, urging fellow citizens who have remained on the sidelines to join them and warning those who are hesitant that they are indirectly helping security forces kill more protesters. Syrian troops trying to sweep them from the streets fired live ammunition and tear gas, killing at least four demonstrators, activists said.
The protests, which have become a weekly ritual after Friday prayers, came hours after a bomb blast struck a major oil pipeline in western Syria, causing oil to spill into a nearby lake.
Opposition groups dubbed Friday’s protests “Your silence is killing us” in an attempt to mobilise sections of the population that have not yet joined the protests and Arab leaders who remain silent on the crackdown against Syria’s uprising. Authorities have waged a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 1,600 civilians since the protests began in mid-March, activists say. Assad’s government has sought to discredit those behind the protests by saying they are terrorists and foreign extremists, rather than true reform-seekers.