Syria Continues Attacks on Hama Protesters

Shelling Continues After Sunday's Massacre

The Syrian city of Hama is still reeling from yesterday’s massacre, which killed at least 140 protesters and wounded scores of others. For the residents, however, this is no time to mourn and bury the dead, as the regime’s tanks continue to attack residential neighborhoods.

Locals are reporting that shells continue to fall on the neighborhoods about every ten seconds. The massive death toll appears to have slowed today, however, as reports have only a handful of additional deaths after a grisly Sunday.

Violence is also being reported in the Damascus suburb of Erbin, as troops with machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks rolled in overnight, killing six and wounding dozens. The attacks don’t seem to be slowing the protests.

And recent history would suggest that isn’t going to change. Syria’s protests started in Daraa, with only a few hundred people. Attacks swelled this to a few thousand, then tens of thousands over a few cities. Now, the protests are nationwide, being held nightly through Ramadan, and numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.