In a side street in a smart suburb of Homs, Syria’s third largest city, up to 200 young men huddled together, seeking safety in numbers as baton-wielding riot police lined up on the main road to confront them.
It was a middle-class protest. The men, their faces tightly wrapped in chequered scarves, were educated and well dressed.
But they were no pushover for up to 30 police ranged against them with riot shields. Nor were they intimidated when a few plainclothes members of the Amn al-Aam internal security took up positions behind the police, carrying machineguns.
While the young men were armed only with the stones they clutched in their hands, their determination was fierce.
“The people want to topple the regime,” they chanted, echoing the cry heard across north Africa and the Middle East during the Arab spring uprisings from Tunisia, Libya and Egypt to Bahrain and Yemen.
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Their courage up, they finally pressed forward, hurling their stones with all the force they could muster.
The response must have surprised them: the police and the Amn al-Aam ran away. Women on the balconies of elegant apartment blocks overlooking the scene ululated and cried “Allahu akhbar” (God is the greatest).
However, it was not long before the security forces stopped running and the protesters’ euphoria was punctured by the rattle of automatic weapons being fired into the air.
The clashes escalated in several parts of the city, and soon the warning shots were replaced by deadly fire. By the end of the afternoon, three protesters and a major from one of the security forces had been killed, with several badly injured on both sides.
Scenes such as those in Homs have been filmed on protesters’ mobile phones during Syria’s uprising, but until this moment, no western journalist had witnessed an eruption of violence that ended in death.
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What struck me most was not so much the defiance of the protesters, courageous though they were to demand a change of government in the face of overwhelming firepower, but the fear of the security forces whose job it is to protect the regime.
The turnout at last Friday’s protests was said by some to be the largest since opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s government took to the streets more than three months ago.
When I drove into Homs at 10.30am, my identity card checked at a solitary checkpoint at the entrance to the city, a stark division between districts was immediately apparent.
In some, the red, white and black national flag fluttered from balconies adorned with posters of Assad by his supporters. In others, the posters had been torn down by the opposition.
At junctions leading to the city centre, soldiers shielded themselves from the blazing sun by sitting in the shade of their tanks, no doubt wondering how much trouble lay ahead. Riot police sat on staircases, chain smoking anxiously.
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There is talk that security breaks down during the hours of darkness. According to some local people, armed gangs from tribal areas terrorise the city. “We call them khafafish [bats], because they only come out at night,” said one.
By day, however, educated, middle-class people — Christians as well as Sunnis and Alawites — join the poor in the anti-government protests.
Just as they had done for the past 13 weeks, they waited for prayers at noon before pouring onto the streets to voice their anger and demand the overthrow of the president.
Those from poor districts came by motorcycle. The affluent arrived at their meeting points in residential avenues in shiny black four-wheel-drive cars.
In some areas, frightened women opposed to the demonstrations closed balcony doors and drew their curtains. Children were called indoors as young men fashioned barricades from dustbins at the entrances to alleyways.
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Some protesters wore swimming goggles, others diving masks, to conceal their identity and protect themselves against tear gas and smoke from burning tyres. Not until everyone was ready, it seemed, did the skirmishing begin.
In one street, I saw a large number of riot police with batons and shields chase stone-throwing protesters down the road.
Veiled women stood at crossroads, watching from a distance, or waved encouragement to the protesters from their balconies. They handed icy bottled water to the men to quench their thirst and soothe their hoarse throats.
When gunfire began to echo round the city, my driver was terrified. As the only western journalist in town, I was viewed with anger and suspicion by both sides, and it became more and more difficult to follow what was happening in different areas.
We drove from one to another and on to the next, trying to stay behind the protesters’ lines as men called out “Go left” or “Turn right” to prevent us from being caught between them and the security forces.
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In several places, young men were throwing stones at the police as the internal security fired bullets and tear gas into the air.
Seven witnesses described the death of a man named Diya’ al-Najjar to Human Rights Watch, saying security forces had opened fire on protesters gathered in the district of al-Qarabis.
“I saw Diya’ al-Najjar shot by a sniper in his head right in front of me,” one witness said. “The sniper was in a Land Cruiser car four or five metres away from protesters.”
The victim’s body was taken to al-Barr hospital, where a doctor confirmed to the human rights group that he had died from a bullet to the head. According to the doctor, 10 protesters had arrived at his hospital with bullet wounds by 6pm on Friday.
A video distributed by activists showed another young man shot by the security forces, his white T-shirt soaked in red blood as he was carried away by the legs and arms in a group of panicking protesters crying, “There is no god but Allah”.
He had been killed by a bullet in the back, this time in al-Qosor, a flashpoint between protesters and the police.
“Carry him, carry him,” someone shouted. Others said: “Take him to his home, take him to his home.” Another person repeated the word “martyr” over and over again.
It was not clear which of the other two protesters who died, Waleed al-Sayyed and Nader Sa’id, this was.
A security commander in Homs said his men had also come under fire at two checkpoints.
“These men were not killed and injured through hit and run attacks or confrontations with the protesters. The shots came from distant buildings,” he said.
The major who was killed was hit by a bullet in the chest in al-Qosor, like one of the protesters, and died in hospital. Four other members of the security forces were injured, the commander claimed — two stabbed and two shot.
According to human rights groups, at least 1,400 civilians have been killed in protests that started in mid-March. Officials in Damascus say the number has been inflated and insist that more than 500 members of the security forces have died.
In the Damascus suburb of Duma, the opposition Local Co-ordination Committee of Syria has tried new tactics in an attempt to extend its campaign to civil disobedience. It is urging residents to stop paying their water, electricity and phone bills.
As I entered the suburb last week, mobile networks ceased to work. Opposition members joked about it, saying that from Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon, the network crashes to halt communications between the protesters and their comrades in surrounding areas.
Though the number of protesters in Duma is said to have subsided in recent weeks, security forces remain there.
“It’s a great feeling to be protesting freely after 40 years,” a local opponent of the regime explained. “You get a sense of pride and a high when you are among the protesters.”
A rich man with his home in Duma and business in Damascus, the opponent said many people had stopped coming on to the streets when others started demanding that Assad must go.
“We are a moderate movement who demand reforms, but not the toppling of the president,” explained the man, who said his brothers and other relatives had been shot or detained in recent weeks.
“We stopped participating when some protesters began using the word ‘leave’. For us the word leave means a constitutional vacuum.”
His comments appeared to reflect the views of some affluent Syrians who want democratic reforms, greater freedom and an overhaul of the internal security services, but who would prefer Assad to preside over change because they fear the unknown and believe that revolution may lead to the kind of chaos seen in neighbouring Iraq after the ousting of Saddam Hussein.
Assad has promised constitutional changes and measures to tackle corruption in the coming months. He has also talked about accepting a multiparty system and holding new elections.
Opponents are sceptical, but some western diplomats believe that for Assad to preside over reform during a transitional period may be a better option than seeing him overthrown, with no obvious replacement in sight.
City governor sacked
President Bashar al-Assad sacked the governor of Hama, in northern Syria, yesterday after an estimated 400,000 protesters flooded the city’s central square on Friday in the largest protest to date against the regime.
Ahmed Abdul-Aziz, a former law professor, had been appointed governor of the city in February.
After the killing of at least 67 protesters in Hama a month ago, Assad promised an investigation. It was a sign of the regime’s nervousness over attacks on the city. Hama is still deeply scarred by the massacre in 1982 of up to 30,000 civilians ordered by Assad’s father, Hafez, in response to an armed uprising.
The dismissal of the governor appears to have come in response to Friday’s protest centred on Assi Square, renamed Freedom Square by the mainly young demonstrators.
The governor’s fate was met with apprehension by the protesters, some of whom believe it could be the prelude to a further crackdown.