Hours before, Hama’s attorney general declared on YouTube he had resigned in protest against bloody repression of street demonstrations.

Residents of Hama said security police and state militiamen, known as shabbiha, raided houses overnight in the Al-Sabouniya and Al-Marabet districts, after troops backed by tanks arrested dozens in two other neighborhoods of the city the night before.

“The inhabitants are responding by shouting ‘God is greatest’ from windows and rooftops. Tonight there are more random raids as opposed to what the army did yesterday, which is go into specific houses looking for suspected activists on a list,” Haidar, a local activist, told journalists by phone. The attorney general of Hama said he had resigned because security forces killed 72 jailed protesters and activists at Hama’s central jail on the eve of the military assault on the city on July 31. He said at least another 420 people were killed in the operation and were buried in mass graves in public parks.

“I, Judge Adnan Mohammad Al-Bakkour, Hama province Attorney-General, announce that I have resigned in protest of the savage regime’s practices against peaceful demonstrators,” Al-Bakkour said in a YouTube video released by activists. An independent lawyer said the person in the video was Al-Bakkour, who also denied reports by state media that he had been kidnapped by armed groups.

Activists on their Facebook page Syrian Revolution 2011 defiantly called for fresh protests on Friday. The rallies will be held under the slogan of “death rather than humiliation,” it said. “We are ready to die in the millions as martyrs.”

Syrian authorities have expelled foreign media making it difficult to verify events in the country. The actual death toll as a result of brutal crackdown is much higher than what is reported in the media if horrifying stories told by relatives of Syrian expatriates in Gulf countries are to be believed.

In the eastern city of Deir Al-Zor, local activists said a six-year-old girl, Rama Khilyawi, was killed and her mother wounded when shabbiha militiamen opened fire in Al-Joura neighborhood to prevent protests after evening prayers.

Several hundred women clad in black also marched in the southern city of Daraa, carrying placards calling for the downfall of Assad.

Meanwhile, a UK official said the US and European leaders are holding talks in the margins of the Paris summit on Libya aimed at toughening the global stance against Assad.