Libya, Syria and Middle East unrest - live coverage

Demonstrators gather in Homs, Syria
Demonstrators gather in Homs, Syria Photograph: /Reuters

4.07pm: I'm going to wrap up the blog for the day now, although it will be updated if there are any significant new developments. I'll leave you with a summary of the main developments in Syria today (a Libya summary is below):

Live blog: recap

The Syrian cabinet has agreed to lift the country's state of emergency laws, which have been in effect since 1963. The official Sana news agency says the government has also approved abolishing the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests. The bill requires the signature of president Assad to take effect but that is expected to be a formality.

Earlier, the Syrian government warned protesters not to take to the streets after security forces opened fire on demonstrators in Homs overnight. More than 5,000 anti-government protesters had taken over the city's main square vowing to remain there until the fall of President Assad's government. Security forces reportedly fired shots and teargas at the demonstrators early this morning after asking them to leave. The government blamed militant Islamists ("Salafi armed groups") for terrorising people.

Syrian security forces have reportedly used sticks against students protesting against the government at Damascus University's faculty of medicine. Orient TV reported that 10 demonstrators were arrested and one student was injured.

3.59pm - Libya: Here's a summary of developments in Libya today:

Live blog: recap

The UK government is sending a "military liaison advisory team" to Libya to assist the opposition leadership in Benghazi. The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, insisted that its remit would be purely to advise the opposition council on how to protect civilians but it comes as his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov accused countries of violating the UN mandate by using it to try to topple Gaddafi. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' former foreign affairs spokesman, warned that sending the team "must not be seen as a first instalment of further military deployment".

Libya's deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kayim, warned that any deployment of ground troops to protect humanitarian missions, as proposed by the EU, would be considered a "military mission".

Shelling of Misrata has continued in Libya. Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's researcher in the city, said she saw casualties being brought into the hospital.

3.50pm: One of the Guardian's Middle East experts, Brian Whitaker, has been taking part in a Q&A in the comments section. My colleague Laura Oliver has been following the thread:

On our Guardian Facebook page, it was asked whether civil war was a risk in Syria. Brian said this was an "unlikely" option "and it would be disastrous for the protesters if they took that route."

Liveblog reader Glenfiddich said he was fearful of a repeat of the "brutal clampdown in Hama in 1982, a traumatic experience which 'taught' many Syrians never to raise their voice against the regime."

But Brian Whitaker said this was an unlikely outcome in the current situation:
"It seems to me that a repeat of the Hama massacre would be far too costly for the regime. A lot has changed since 1982."

Grantbud asked about President Bashar's tactics and whether he could use events in Syria as an opportunity to push through his own reforms:
"From my understanding, Bashar is relatively popular in Syria, especially compared with the rest of the people in the regime. I'm curious why Bashar wouldn't use this opportunity to enact reforms that would leave him personally in power (and greatly popular), but would let him flush out some internal (factional) threats to his power that inevitably comes with one party states?"

"It's not really a straightforward one-party state," said Brian Whitaker. "There's the Assad family and the interests of the Alawite minority to consider. It's not that easy to 'flush out' the problem people in the regime when they include your brother, cousin and brother-in-law."

erason also asked about the president's future - will he step down quickly and will the army get involved? Brian said he thinks Assah will "go for the Saleh approach: sit it out as long as possible."

"As for the security forces, it's probably a bit early to say. Presumably at some point they will start to realise that their current methods aren't working and can't be made to work."

Brian was asked via our Facebook page whether Syrian protestors are calling for foreign intervention:

"I haven't seen any comments on this from inside Syria but the exiled dissident Ammar Abdulhamid wrote this recently:

Rather than waiting until Bashar's thugs on the streets bring his "prophecy" to fulfillment, world leaders need to take action now to explain to the Assads that there will be consequences to their thuggery. Assets freeze, targeted sanctions, actions by UN Commission on Human Rights and UN Security Council, all these are now steps that need to be considered. Let's see for once if we can prevent conflict, rather than manage it.

"Basically, that looks like a call for sanctions and heavy diplomatic pressure rather than military intervention."

3.43pm: The Guardian's stringer in Damascus, Katherine Marsh, has more on the Syrian cabinet's decision to lift the country's long-standing emergency laws:

Razan Zeitouneh, a lawyer in Damascus, says that the state of emergency is not yet lifted. "It still needs to be issued in a decree," she says. "But I think this will be done in the coming few days, perhaps tomorrow."

Meanwhile, Syrians in the capital have today been increasingly drawing parallels with the 1980s. This has been prompted by the government's claims yesterday that it is facing a Salafist insurgency. But they also refer to the heavy-handed tactics of the government which involve shootings and arrests, as well as the deaths of army officers which the government claims is perpetrated by armed criminal groups.

The fact Syrian strangers are willing to tell you these things and openly talk about the unrest, whatever their view of it, is quite amazing. A month ago this wasn't the case. It's a sign of how much this country has irrevocably changed.

Katherine says residents of Banias released a statement today condemning the government's claims of a Salafist uprising. They said:

The people had nothing but high expectations from the reform plans and the new government, but we now see the same old mentality prevailing again. We iterate again that we took the streets in our city... asking for a civil modern government where justice and dignity for all the people prevail, regardless of their political backgrounds.

Ian Black

3.36pm - Syria: The Guardian's Middle East editor, Ian Black, says the Syrian cabinet's decision to repeal its emergency laws, assuming it is signed off by Assad, represents the president's "biggest concession yet to the protest movement":

Opposition activists have warned in advance that new laws will maintain severe curbs on political freedoms. But the symbolic value of the change is enormous.

Signalling the move, Assad had already made clear that replacement legislation would not be lenient towards what he termed "sabotage". Nor is there any sign of a change to the law that gives secret police officers immunity from prosecution. Membership of the banned Muslim Brotherhood remains a capital offence. Still, the formal requirement of Assad's signature on the cabinet decision masks a significant step that he must be hoping will help defuse mounting popular anger.

The emergency law has been in force since 1963 - the year of Syria's first Ba'ath coup. It restricts public gatherings and the free movement of individuals, allows government agents to arrest "suspects or people who threaten security," authorises the monitoring of personal communications and legalizes media censorship.

Other concessions Assad has made since the start of the protests include appointing a new cabinet, establishing committees to investigate the killing of civilians in the recent protests and granting Syrian citizenship to thousands of the country's stateless Kurdish minority.

3.17pm - Syria: To clarify the position with respect to Syria's emergency law, it has not yet been lifted. The Syrian cabinet has approved a bill lifting the laws but it still requires the signature of President Assad before it can come into effect.

3.10pm - Syria: Syrians pray in Clock Square in Homs. The picture was taken before police moved in.

Syrians pray in Clock Square Photograph: Str/AP


3.03pm - Syria: The Guardian has a picture gallery of the protests in Homs.

3.00pm - Syria: AP has more on moves to repeal the 50-year-old emergency law by the Syrian cabinet. It should be noted that cabinet approval is the first step and that the draft has yet to be made into law.

The Sana news agency says the government also abolished the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests. But it's unclear whether the moves will ease the crackdown on anti-government demonstrators. Just hours earlier, authorities issued a stern warning for protesters to back down.

2.47pm: A news flash from AP: State news agency: Syria lifts state of decades-old state of emergency. Katharine Marsh, our correspondent in Damascus, said people suspected that President Assad may lift the emergency law in advance of Friday after having said in a speech on Saturday that he would do so within a week. She adds, however:

At this stage, few of those protesting care. "Syria is not known for paying much attention to legal bases at the best of times," says one lawyer in Damascus. "As long as the security forces remain as they are, we can assume there will not be any substantive change in the way people are treated, whatever the legal reforms."

2.41pm - Libya: Amid Libyan rebel complaints that Nato is not doing enough to help break the siege of Misrata, Nato Brigadier General Mark van Uhm said alliance forces have destroyed more than 40 tanks and several armoured personnel carriers there.

Van Uhm, speaking in Brussels, cautioned: "There is a limit to what can be achieved by air power to stop fighting in a city. We are doing everything to prevent civilian casualties by our own attacks (while) degrading (Gaddafi's) ability to sustain forces there."

2.23pm - Libya: As Britain prepares to send "experienced military officers" to Libya, France says it is opposed to the idea of sending its troops. The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, also told reporters that the west had underestimated Gaddafi's ability to adapt his tactics in response to Nato's military intervention.

2.17pm - Libya: Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' former foreign affairs spokesman, raises the spectre of Vietnam, following the news that Britain is sending a "military liaison advisory team" to Libya.

Sending advisers for a limited purpose is probably within the terms of Resolution 1973, but it must not be seen as a first instalment of further military deployment. Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers. We must proceed with caution.

2.10pm - Syria: Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, provides some historical background to Syria's current unrest and says Syrians are likely to be remembering the brutal suppression in Hama in 1982.

Ian Black

Claims by the government that it is now facing an "armed insurrection" in Homs and Baniyas, on the coast, sound ominous enough. But the charge that the rebels are Salafists - fundamentalist Sunnis equated by many with al-Qaida - who are bent on fomenting sectarian strife is even more worrying (and, crucially, apparently untrue). Still, memories of what happened in neighbouring Iraq are still strong, helping the regime to present itself as a secular bulwark against religious conflict.

The official version of what happened in Hama 29 years ago is that there was an armed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood. The number of dead is estimated at between 10,000 and 40,000, the vast majority of them civilians. It was probably the single bloodiest act of repression by an Arab government against its own people in the 20th century, outstripping Saddam Hussein's attacks on the Iraqi Kurds.

Hama, a famously conservative town, had long been a bastion of opposition to Syria's ruling Ba'ath party, based then as now on the Alawite minority. In the late 1970s there was serious violence, including deadly bomb attacks, on regime targets in Damascus and Aleppo. Hafez al-Assad's older brother, Rifa'at, commanded the special armoured units that crushed the 1982 uprising. No trace of it remains today in Hama itself, where an entire neighbourhood was razed and bulldozed over — a ghostly presence for the tourists who flock to see the picturesque giant wooden water wheels on the Orontes river.

1.57pm - Syria: Brian Whitaker, who will be responding to your questions soon, has written about the confrontation between protesters and the Assad regime in Syria.

Considering how far Syria lags behind – it doesn't even approach the limited levels of freedom that existed in Mubarak's Egypt – and how often moves towards reform have stalled in the past, there is no real prospect of satisfying the demonstrators while Assad remains in power. As one resident of Syria put it in an article: "You cannot fix a fundamentally dysfunctional regime."

So the protests look set to continue. "From alley to alley, from house to house, we want to overthrow you, Bashar." But the crucial question is how. What, exactly, would it take to get Assad to step down? Might he not decide, like Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, to stay put in his palace come hell or high water?

The Baathist regime may indeed be dying, but its death throes could be long and painful.

1.44pm - Libyai: The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood, who is in Tripoli, has sent an update on a press conference given by the deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kayim, in which warns that any deployment of ground troops to protect humanitarian missions, as proposed by the EU, would be considered a "military mission".

Harriet Sherwood.

"If there is any deployment of any armed personnel on Libyan ground, there will be fighting. The Libyan government will not take it as a humanitarian mission, it will be taken as a military mission," he said.

"[Nato] is acting beyond the security council resolution. They have their own objectives. If they keep acting like this, they are pushing the country to civil war and the Libyan people will not stay silent. They will join the armed forces and fight."

Kayim said the Libyan government was doing its utmost "to help people and supply them with food".

He repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether Libya would agree to a pause in military action to allow humanitarian aid to reach the besieged city of Misrata. "There is no need for such things," he said.

"There is no bombardment from the armed forces on Misrata, none at all. There are pockets of resistance but other areas are peaceful, There is no fighting in Misrata."

He claimed the international coalition was exaggerating the number of casualties in Misrata. "This is all shit."

Nato airstrikes had hit three telecommunications installations around the city of Sirte yesterday, he said. "The objective is to damage telecommunications networks, both landlines and mobiles. These raids come from requests from the rebels to enable them to advance west.

"These developments come at the same time as the British government sends very sophisticated telecommunications equipment to the rebels to enable them to organise themselves."

1.33pm: Here's a summary of developments so far today:

Live blog: recap





Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague Photograph: Pool/REUTERS

1.21pm - Libya: The UK is sending a "military liaison advisory team" to Benghazi to assist the opposition council, foreign secretary William Hague has revealed in a statement.

It could prompt accusations of "mission creep", although the statement does emphasise the "humanitarian" nature of its role. The relevant part reads:

The National Security Council has decided that we will now move quickly to expand the team already in Benghazi led by Christopher Prentice to include an additional military liaison advisory team.

This contingent will be drawn from experienced British military officers. These additional personnel will enable the UK to build on the work already being undertaken to support and advise the NTC on how to better protect civilians. In particular they will advise the NTC on how to improve their military organisational structures, communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance. In doing so, we will coordinate closely with other international partners also assisting the NTC.

This deployment is fully within the terms of UNSCR 1973 both in respect of civilian protection and its provision expressly ruling out a foreign occupation force on Libyan soil. Consistent with our obligations under that resolution, our officers will not be involved in training or arming the opposition's fighting forces. Nor will they be involved in the planning or execution of the NTC's military operations or in the provision of any other form of operational military advice.

Hague's statement comes as Russia has warned that attempts to topple Gaddafi are a violation of the UN resolution on Libya, which only authorises the use of force to protect civilians. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said:

The UN security council never aimed to topple the Libyan regime. All those who are currently using the UN resolution for that aim are violating the UN mandate.

12.51pm - Syria: More details are coming out about a protest at Damascus University's faculty of medicine via the Syrian independent satellite channel, Orient. It was reported earlier on Twitter that security forces have used electrified batons against protesters.

Orient is apparently reporting (link in Arabic) that 10 demonstrators have been arrested and one student has been injured.

12.31pm - Libya: The Washington Post's Leila Fadel is one of the few journalists to report from inside Misrata. Fadel says the question for residents is how long they can survive as Gaddafi escalates his attacks and supplies become ever more scarce.

Overhead, snipers eyed their targets while camped out in the insurance building — the tallest on the block — and in an adjacent bank. Rebels said the snipers are remarkably efficient, picking off their marks with shots to the head and chest. Rebels don't bother to operate at night, because the snipers use night-vision goggles to target anything that moves.

"We tried to blow up the buildings, but we don't know how," said Alaa el Deen Khesham, 30, a rebel fighter who until two months ago worked in public relations for the government. "We threw homemade bombs in there, but it didn't do anything."

He looked down with sadness: "We wish Nato would bomb the buildings."

12.15pm - Syria: It may be an exercise in futility, but the Syrian government is warning people not to take part in any protests. An interior ministry statement on Syrian TV says Syrian laws will be implemented to "safeguard the people's security and the country's stability". Protesters seem to be paying scant regard to such appeals.

12.10pm - Yemen: The UN children's fund says 26 children have been killed during protests in Yemen over the last two months. Unicef said most of the children died of wounds from live ammunition.

12.06pm - Syria: Brian Whitaker, one of the Guardian's Middle East experts, will be on at 2pm GMT for a live web chat on the situation in Syria.

Brian - who spent seven years as the Guardian's Middle East editor - has reported widely from the region, and is the author of What's Really Wrong with the Middle East.

What kind of threat to the Assad regime does the current wave of protests represent? What are the dangers of sectarian violence in a country with many religious minorities? Are Assad's modest offers of reform likely to be enough to satisfy the protesters?

Post your questions in the comments below, and Brian will start posting his answers at 2pm.

12.01pm - Libya: Reuters has been in touch with Donatella Rovera (8.56am), Amnesty's researcher in Misrata, who says there has been renewed shelling today.

"They were shelling very close by, in the area slightly to the northwest of the centre ... I just left the hospital, there were casualties coming in," she said by phone.

"These are the areas which are, for now, in the hands of the opposition and they are being shelled by Gaddafi forces. The city centre is the front line."

"There is no electricity. The town is functioning on generators ... the reserves of fuel are being used up. The supply of water has now been cut off for weeks, so again what is being used is reserves. They've gone back to using old wells."

11.47am - Yemen: A Yemeni activist says four anti-government protesters were wounded after security forces opened fire on demonstrators in south Yemen. Nouh al-Wafi told AP that several thousand protesters in the city of Taiz were demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh when security forces fired on the crowd.

11.45am - Syria: @ZainSyr is tweeting, in Arabic, that security forces are using electrified batons to try to break up a demonstration at Damascus University's medicine faculty.

11.41am - Syria: Clock Square in Homs is empty now, Katharine says, except for security preventing people from coming back.

11.37am - Syria: Katherine Marsh - our correspondent in Damascus - says some people in the capital are worried by government reports that Salafists were involved, Salafism being a strict form of Sunni Islam which is often equated with militant Islamist groups.

This is unlikely to deter protesters, but could affect some of the undecided majority. Many reports on Homs describe it as a "conservative" city. The tag, which was also applied to Deraa and Douma, is not particularly instructive. A lot of Syrian society is conservative.

Homs also has a reputation for being full of liberal artists, journalists and intellectuals who oppose the regime. On past visits I have found it to be a lively city with a diverse mix of people. It is worth looking at cities and try to see what particular factors may be at work, but to try and detach Homs from growing restiveness across the country would be misleading. There have been protests in enough places now.

11.21am - Libya: Benjamin Barber, the US academic who resigned from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's foundation at the outset of the insurgency, has just been talking at the Guardian's morning news conference about Libya and particularly Saif. Barber's main point is that it would be too easy to dismiss Saif's reformist credentials. Even though Saif has put blood over principle, Barber argues, Saif along with Abdullah al-Senussi, the national security chief (who is also Muammar Gaddafi's brother-in-law), remain the regime's only credible interlocutors. So if the west wants a negotiated settlement and avoid a prolonged civil war that could end up benefiting Islamist extremists, it will have to talk to these two. "You need to talk to someone and Saif and Senussi" are the most viable, Barber said. For a fuller exposition of his position, read Barber's piece for Comment is Free last week.

10.56am - Syria: The Guardian has compiled amateur video footage of recent demonstrations in Syria:


10.53am - Syria: An eyewitness to events in Homs told AP by telephone:

They shot at everything, there was smoke everywhere. I saw people on the ground, some shot in their feet, some in the stomach.

Another resident said:

They went up to people's homes, they arrested many," a Homs resident said by telephone. "We heard ambulances all night.

AP writes:


The protesters, mostly young men but including women and children, had set up tents, bringing in mattresses, food and drinks. One tent was named "national unity tent." Another "martyrs" tent was set up to offer condolences for those killed a day earlier, according to an eyewitness.

9.52am - Syria: It's unclear if pro-democracy activists are still occupying the square in the Syrian city of Homs where shooting broke out last night, but according to Katherine Marsh - our correspondent in Damascus - events in the city are a sign that the country's protest movement is gaining momentum.

Homs is Syria's third largest city. In the absence of major protests in Aleppo and Damascus, getting a foothold here would be significant for the pro-democracy movement, which is rapidly gathering steam but has yet to reach a tipping point. Activists have drawn inspiration from their counterparts in Egypt, where Tahrir square became a focus for weeks of protest which eventually brought down Hosni Mubarak. Occupying Clock Square could be a major step forward for them.

The size of last night's protest is also significant: some reports said as many as 10,000 protestors congregated on the square. There have been a few larger protests in the cities of Deraa and Douma, but most demonstrations have been much smaller.

Katherine also says the government's reaction, which was to blame the unrest on outsiders and militant Islamists is becoming ever more untenable:

In a tweet this morning Chatham House's Syria expert Rime Allaf said: "How many 'armed insurrections' have you seen just sit in the middle of a square & wait to be gunned down?"

Syria's government has often invoked the threat of Islamism to justify its hardline policy on internal dissent. Syrian society includes large minorities of Christians and Druze, and the fear of sectarian violence is often cited as an argument against too much political freedom.s

Conservative Sunni groups have represented the biggest challenge to the Baath regime since it came to power in 1963, prompting a crackdown by the government throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

There are also fears of a repeat of 1982, when an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood was brutally suppressed, with up to 10,000 people massacred in Hama, close to Homs:

Such a reaction may be less likely in an age of Twitter and YouTube, but last night's use of violence has heightened fears among protesters, said Mohammed Essa, an activist in Homs. 'We want a social and political solution to this,' said Essa. 'It is getting nasty.'"

9.39am - Syria: A Syrian activist explains what is driving the anti-government protests, on the Institute for War and Peace reporting website.





9.19am - Libya: Reuters has an interesting analysis of the balance of forces in Misrata. While pro-Gaddafi forces have the advantage in weapons, the insurgents have local knowledge and the urban terrain favours them. The key rebel advantage, analysts tell Reuters, is the port and the lifeline it provides.

"Control of the port is essential because without that they would be truly cut off, they would fold, they would not be able to withstand the siege," Shashank Joshi, analyst at Britain's Royal United Service Institute, said...

Footage of rag-tag rebels with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles crouching among crumbling buildings and launching hit-and-run attacks evoke images of other city sieges - such as the Serb encirclement of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.

But analysts say they have a much-needed edge in fighting in built-up areas on their home turf. They know the terrain better than their adversaries, who may also experience difficulties in using their heavy weaponry to maximum effect.

"Even the most efficient and professional troops in the world - like the Americans, the British, who have been in Iraq for example - have found that in urban fighting the advantage is always on the defender," said military analyst Paul Beaver.

Insurgents can use their local knowledge to spring ambushes, and the only way to seize Misrata would be to start levelling it, as the Soviets did in Berlin at the end of World War Two.

9.02am - Syria: A Syrian activist and blogger based in New York, Ammar Abdulhamid, writes about the protests in Homs. His blog carries several videos of demonstrations in Homs and elsewhere.

The sit-in lasted the entire day and well through the night, but as the day unfolded numbers grew to around 6,000 protesters around 2am on Tuesday. Shortly after, eyewitnesses reported the beginning of a crackdown by security forces. Early reports spoke of heavy gunfire but mentioned only one fatality and a number of injured. Videos that were posted later seem to confirm these reports. Assad security officers might have been shooting in the air to scare off the remaining protesters, rather than at them, for once. However, later reports indicate that the main theatre of events are the side-streets where security officers tried to trap and arrest protesters as they pulled out from the square, occasionally firing straight at them, as some eyewitnesses asserted.

8.56am - Libya: Donatella Rovera, a researcher for Amnesty International, is keeping an account of what she has seen in Misrata. it provides an invaluable insight into what is going on there with few journalists being able to gain access. Here is part of her blog.

Here in Misrata, Libya's third city, we have just experienced four more days of relentless shelling by Colonel al-Gaddafi's forces. In just two of the residential neighbourhoods I have been able to visit in the past four days – Qasr Ahmad in the east of the city and Zawia al-Mahjoub in the west – hundreds of rockets and mortar shells have rained down, literally all over the place. I have lost count of how many homes I've seen that have been hit in these clearly indiscriminate attacks.

Medical clinics, schools, mosques, factories and the port – where thousands of foreign workers are stranded and waiting to be rescued – are just some of the locations that have come under attack. Fortunately, many of the residents of the houses that took direct hits escaped injury but others were not so lucky. Adults and children alike have been killed and injured in their homes and on the streets by flying shrapnel from these projectiles.

In the centre of town, where the "frontline" between Colonel al-Gaddafi's forces and opposition fighters keeps shifting from street to street, the devastation is extensive. In this area I found cluster bombs all over the place – they present an enormous danger, not least because these munitions have a high "dud" rate, meaning that unexploded bombs litter the area.

8.47am - Syria: No independent media are allowed in Homs or other cities to report on the anti-government demonstrations and several international journalists have been expelled or arrested, but this YouTube video gives an idea of the size of the protests in Homs.


8.30am - Syria: The Syrian government is under renewed pressure as clashes break out between security forces and protesters in Homs, Syria's third largest city. The Associated Press said more than 5,000 anti-government protesters took over the main square overnight. Reuters says security forces fired shots and tear gas at the demonstrators early this morning after asking them to leave. Here's part of the Reuters account.

A member of the security police addressed the protesters at Clock Square through a loud speaker asking them to leave, and then the forces opened fire, said the human rights campaigner, who is in contact with protesters in the square.

Tear gas was also used. At least one protester was injured, the activist added. Two residents of Homs also said they heard the sound of gunfire coming from around the square.

Several hours earlier, Syrian state television broadcast an interior ministry statement that described the wave of unrest in Syria as an insurrection, pointing specifically to Homs as one of two cities where "armed groups belonging to Salafist organisations" were trying to terrorise the population.

Salafism is a strict form of Sunni Islam which many Arab governments equate with militant groups like al-Qaida.

Thousands demanded the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad on Monday at the funerals of 17 protesters killed in Homs, 100 miles north of Damascus. Human rights campaigners said the 17 had been killed late on Sunday during protests against the death in custody of a tribal leader in Homs.

There is YouTube video purporting to show the clashes in Homs. You don't see the security forces but the sound of gunfire is loud and clear.


8.00am:Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi could retake Misrata within days unless Nato steps up its military intervention to assist the besieged rebels, according to an opposition spokesman inside the city. Rebels say there have been no Nato air strikes on government positions for three days.

The United Nations has signed an agreement with Libya for a "humanitarian presence" in the country but it is still unclear how this will help Misrata, the focus of mounting international concern. Officials in New York made clear that the EU – which has drawn up plans to deploy military forces on the ground in Libya to assist the humanitarian effort – would only be asked to help "as a last resort". Nato repeated that it would not get directly involved in supplying aid.

A chartered ship evacuated nearly 1,000 foreign workers and wounded Libyans from Misrata, the second evacuation ship in the past few days. An estimated 4,000 refugees await rescue.

Security forces fired shots and tear gas at hundreds of protesters who had gathered overnight in the main square in Homs, Syria's third largest city. Human rights campaigners say the demonstrators were asked to leave by the security police, which then opened fire. At least one protester was reported injured.

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