Secret police raided homes near Damascus overnight, rights campaigners said on Sunday, as popular opposition to authoritarian President Bashar Assad mounted following the bloodiest attacks on pro-democracy protesters.
Security forces fired at tens of thousands of people joining funeral processions Saturday, bringing the death toll from two days of violence to more than 120. Two lawmakers and a local religious leader to resign in disgust over the killings.
Security operatives in plain clothes wielding assault rifles broke into homes in the suburb of Harasta just after midnight on Sunday, arresting activists in the area, known as the Ghouta, or the old garden district of the capital.
Assad lifted an emergency law this week, in place since his Baath Party seized power 48 years ago, in a bid to appease protesters and ease international criticism of the use of deadly force against civilians.
Opponents say the crackdown on demonstrators and the arrests that followed show the move was hollow.
The resignations were a possible sign of cracks developing in the regime's base in a nation where nearly all opposition figures have been either jailed or exiled during the 40-year dynasty of the Assad family.
"I cannot tolerate the blood of our innocent sons and children being shed," Sheikh Rizq Abdul-Rahim Abazeid told The Associated Press after stepping down from his post as the mufti of the Daraa region in southern Syria.
The lawmakers, Nasser Hariri and Khalil Rifai, also are from Daraa, which has become the epicenter of the protest movement after a group of teenagers were arrested there for scrawling anti-regime graffiti on a wall in mid-March.
Since then, the relentless crackdown on demonstrations has only served to invigorate protesters whose rage over the bloodshed has all but eclipsed their earlier demands for modest reforms. Now, many are seeking Assad's downfall.
Each Friday, growing numbers of people in cities across the country have taken to the streets despite swift attacks from security forces and shadowy pro-government gunmen known as "shabiha."
Ammar Qurabi, the head of Syria's National Organization for Human Rights, said 112 people were killed Friday and at least 11 on Saturday. Friday was by far the deadliest day of the uprising, with security forces beating back protesters with bullets, tear gas and stun guns.
Assad has ejected most foreign media from the country during his crackdown on protesters, so independent reports of the violence are difficult to verify.
Demonstrators have been using the Internet to get out pictures of the violence, many of which have been explicit.
One video posted on Internet site YouTube showed a crowd marching on Friday near Abbasside square in Damascus, purportedly on Friday, chanting "the people want the overthrow of the regime," before the sound of gunfire was heard.
Demonstrators raised their hands to show that they were unarmed. The fire intensified. One youth fell, with blood spurting from his head and back. His comrades lifted him but dropped his body when the sound of bullets resumed.
"If I cannot protect the chests of my people from these treacherous strikes, then there is no meaning for me to stay in the People's Assembly. I declare my resignation," Hariri told Al-Jazeera in a televised interview.
Resignations largely symbolic
Radwan Ziadeh, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, said the resignations were largely symbolic because the parliament has no real power. But their dissent could encourage others to step down, such as Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, who is from Daraa, Ziadeh said.
He added Assad met with the lawmakers in recent weeks, promising them that security forces would not shoot protesters.
The uprising in Syria takes its inspiration from the popular revolts that toppled the leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. But Syria is a highly unpredictable country, in part because of its sizable minority population, the loyalty of the country's military and the regime's web of allegiances to powerful forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Serious, prolonged unrest in Syria would almost inevitably hurt Hezbollah and weaken Iran's influence in the region. But it is not at all clear what factions would have the upper hand if a power vacuum emerges in Syria. There are no organized, credible opposition leaders who can rally followers on the ground or be considered as a possible successor.
The heavy security crackdown on Friday and Saturday came after Assad warned a week ago that any further unrest would be considered "sabotage" after he made the gesture of lifting long-hated emergency laws, which gave security forces almost blanket powers for surveillance and arrest.
One man who took part in Friday's protests outside Damascus said the country's security forces are everywhere.
"The garbage collectors are intelligence agents," he told the AP in a telephone interview. "Sometimes we think even our wives are working with the intelligence. All the phones are monitored. We live in hell."
Another man said plainclothes officers are becoming more apparent in the crowds, with security agents wearing orange bracelets so other agents don't mistakenly hit them with stun guns.
The snipers, he said, wore yellow pieces of cloth on their shoulders.
The witness accounts could not be independently confirmed because Syria has expelled journalists and restricted access to trouble spots. Witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Elias Muhanna, a political analyst at Harvard University, said the protests have crossed a threshold and serious pressure could be building on Assad.
A country under tight control
The protest movement has been the gravest challenge to the autocratic regime led by Assad, who inherited power from his father 11 years ago in one of the most rigidly controlled countries in the Middle East.
"It remains to be seen whether this was a tipping point in the struggle between the opposition and the regime," said Muhanna, author of the Lebanese affairs blog Qifa Nabki. "But one thing is certain: The regime can no longer claim that the demonstrations are a fringe phenomenon."
Assad has blamed most of the unrest on a "foreign conspiracy" and armed thugs trying to sow sectarian strife. Fears of sectarianism resonate in Syria, with the dangers of fractured societies so apparent in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
Besides the government crackdown, Assad has been trying to defuse the protests by offering a series of concessions: granting citizenship to thousands among Syria's long-ostracized Kurdish minority, firing local officials, releasing detainees and forming a new government. The recent lifting of emergency laws once had been a top demand.
But many protesters said the concessions have come too late and that Assad does not even deserve the credit because the protest movement is forcing his hand.
The increasing death toll also has brought international condemnation.
In Washington on Friday, President Barack Obama condemned the latest use of force by Syria against anti-government demonstrators and said the regime's "outrageous" use of violence must "end now."
Syria's state TV quoted an unnamed official as saying Damascus "regrets" Obama's comments.
"They are not based on an objective vision," the official said, without elaborating.
This report contains information from Reuters and The Associated Press.