The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, which helps organize and document the country’s protests, said heavy gunfire was heard in Rastan, a few miles (kilometers) north of the central city of Homs and has been under attack since Sunday.
The committee said Ibrahim Salmoun was killed in the Tuesday attacks. His death raises to 16 the number of people killed in the three-day crackdown in Homs province, scene of some of the largest anti-government demonstrations in recent weeks, activists said.
The Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad is determined to crush the ten-week old revolt against his rule. The government claims the uprising is the work of Islamic extremists and armed gangs. State media said four soldiers and security forces had been killed in the Homs fighting.
Details coming out of Syria are sketchy because the government has placed severe restrictions on the media and expelled foreign reporters, making it nearly impossible to independently verify accounts coming out of the country.
Mohammad Said Bkheitan, assistant secretary general of the ruling Baath party, said the protest movement nationwide amounted to no more than 100,000 people.
“They are the same people who demonstrate each time,” he told Baath party cadres at Damascus University. His remarks were broadcast on Syrian television late Monday.
Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands arrested in the government crackdown, which has drawn condemnation and sanctions from the United States and European Union.
Bkheitan said mechanisms for a national dialogue would be announced within the next 48 hours and said a general amnesty is expected to be issued soon. He did not elaborate. The regime has spoke vaguely of reforming the system but has failed to implement changes.
Bkheitan said talking about constitutional changes that would allow challenges to Assad in the 2014 presidential election was “premature.” He further suggested that the regime was not ready to amend the portion of the constitution that declares the Baath Party as the leader of the state and society. That is one of the opposition’s key demands.
“Now there are other priorities,” Bkheitan said, without elaboration.
Activists told The Associated Press Monday that Homs residents used automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to repel advancing government troops in Rastan and Talbiseh, also in Homs province. Residents put up a fierce fight for the first time in their two-month-old revolt against Assad’s autocratic regime.
The activists said the fighting involved individual residents protecting themselves, not an organized armed resistance with an overall command structure.
Monday’s accounts were the first credible reports of serious resistance by residents taking up arms. Some reports have also surfaced of civilians fighting back in the town of Talkalakh near the border with Lebanon. Both the government and human rights group say more than 150 soldiers and policemen have been killed since the unrest began.
A resident of Homs told AP Tuesday that resistance was continuing in Rastan, but that government troops entered Talbiseh late Monday and made sweeping arrests.
“They entered the town and it looks like they have accomplished their mission,” he said.
Syria’s Al Watan newspaper also said Tuesday that Talbiseh was now under the full control of security forces and the army.
The newspaper also said the main highway which also leads to Lebanon was closed by the army “to preserve citizens’ lives as armed groups are targeting all passing cars.”
