BEIRUT—When Abdelkadir left his university dorm some 10 days ago and traveled to southern Syria to check on his family in the city of Deraa—where protests were raging—he brought along a copy of an international newspaper.
A week later, after the Syrian military surrounded the city last Monday and launched a relentless and deadly crackdown that has kept most residents cowering in their houses, that newspaper remains the last glimpse the family has had of the outside world.
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Associated Press
In this image made on a mobile phone from the window of a car, two Syrian soldiers and an armed man in civilian clothes stand at a checkpoint in Damascus, Syria, on Sunday.
"We stayed up late last night, talking, thinking—how much longer can we stay like this, and where can they go with it?" said the 25-year-old Abdelkadir, who asked that his last name not be used, to protect the security of his family, who huddled with him around a cellphone early Saturday morning. "Every day, we say, 'Tomorrow it will be over; the military will withdraw.' We woke up to artillery rounds again today."
On Sunday evening, after another weekend in which at least 30 residents were killed and armed troops stormed the city's main mosque, the Syrian government announced the military operation in Deraa was continuing to hunt "armed terrorist groups." There were reports of shelling into the city center during the day. Security forces again fired automatic weapons at the al-Omari mosque, while hundreds were arrested in home raids, activists said.
"I wonder who is left to arrest in Deraa, between the dead and the already detained," one activist said.
Amateur video purportedly shows Syrian troops firing rounds on the streets of Daraa. Video courtesy Reuters.
When the government first sent in tanks and troops on April 25, it said the deployment was at the request of Deraa residents, to save them from what Damascus called terrorist groups. But by the accounting of Deraa residents reached by phone, nearly all of that firepower has been focused on the citizens of the city, which has a population of nearly 80,000.
The al-Omari mosque, with its enclosed courtyard, has become a rallying square for protesters. Streets across the rest of the city—made up of a residential quarter with two-story, black basalt houses, and a district with government and commercial buildings—are deserted, residents said.
Protesters have renamed the area around the mosque Dignity Square. But even the hundreds who used to gather for Friday prayer at the mosque have dwindled to dozens over the past few weeks, as soldiers and snipers scare away the faithful.
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Last Friday, about 60 men prayed at the mosque and walked out together chanting "peaceful, peaceful." Troops shot some of them and arrested others, Abdelkadir said. Thousands of protesters marched Friday across most of Syria's other major cities and towns.
On Saturday, newly appointed Prime Minister Adel Safar said the government would set up committees to develop a comprehensive plan for reforms, the state news agency said.
That day in Deraa, tanks and machine-gun-wielding soldiers killed between four and six people at the mosque, according to activist accounts. Security forces shot Osama al-Sayassneh, the son of the mosque's imam, in the courtyard, according to the activists. Another account says Mr. al-Sayassneh was shot outside his home after being pulled out for interrogation on his father's whereabouts. His father, the Imam Ahmad, is understood to have been detained or to have given himself in to security, these activists said.
Abdelkadir, an English literature student at Tishreen University in Latakia, said he isn't a political activist—although he has been held for questioning even before the latest protests began. He described himself as someone who likes to read and "discover life"—and someone who wants "a civil society in Syria," a better constitution, and an independent judiciary. He was proud to be one of the few people with a subscription to an English-language newspaper.
"I want to be a citizen, to be held accountable and be able to hold accountable," he said. "They want to divide us and divide our loyalties so they can rule us."
Deraa, known for wheat cultivation and olive-oil production on the border with Jordan, is where the protests in Syria began seven weeks ago after security forces arrested 25 teenagers for scrawling graffiti on their Ba'ath Party school that echoed antiregime slogans from uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The Ba'ath Party has monopolized political life in Syria since 1963.
On April 25, tanks and troops moved into the city. Electricity and telecommunications were cut, residents said. Only a few international cellphone lines and satellite phones, brought in through the Jordanian border, now allow residents to call outside the city.
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Amateur video shows Syrian army tank entering Deraa, Syria, April 25.
"I'm in a room with no light. I don't have electricity or water. This international phone line—four neighborhoods come to use this," Abdelkadir said. A handful of satellite phones charged by car batteries are no longer working.
Children here have been out of school for nearly a month. Women sit indoors, praying and hoarding supplies in safe rooms on the bottom floor, as more than one family sometimes crowds into the top floor. "We share supplies and we try to sit together," said one resident. "We chant 'God is great' because there is no one but God looking out for us."
Bread is smuggled in carts from the surrounding villages or on horseback, if they can dodge the constant gunfire and sporadic artillery that has pounded the city for a week, residents said. Water tanks, destroyed by the military, are empty. Infant formula and insulin for diabetics started running out a few days ago, they said.
Bodies of those killed, some of which were left out on the street for two days because few dared to run out to grab them, have been dragged inside homes, residents said. More than 80 bodies lie in makeshift morgues around the city, with more than 100 people killed since the military siege began, human-rights activists said.
Abdelkadir's neighbors, mostly construction workers, had never seen a military tank in real life, he said. "And then there is my little nephew, who runs out into the living room and tells us, 'I want to be a martyr.' " His sister, a teachers' assistant at a school in the city, said she hasn't been in contact with the teachers for more than a week and doesn't know whether school will open again.
Abdelkadir's cousin, who didn't want to give her name, said she was confused by President Bashar al-Assad's response to the protests that have taken over her hometown. She wants the president to seize power from the security and intelligence forces who actually rule Syria, she said.
"The army has to stand with the people. They need to let the protesters come out, without violence. Everyone needs to express themselves and leave the regime room to make reforms. We don't want Syria to be destroyed," she said.
Syria's multilayered security apparatus is invasive and discouraging, she said. After following in Abdelkadir's footsteps and taking English courses at an institute, she was constantly questioned. "Why are you studying English? Why do you go to Jordan so much?" she said they would ask her.
"We don't want the mukhabarat [intelligence services] to rule us," she said. "We need comprehensive reform in the regime. We need a new education system and an entirely new school curriculum, so we don't all come out in the same mold."
She continued: "We love Bashar, but the people below and around him aren't listening to him anymore."
Mr. Assad came into power in 2000, following his father's 30-year rule, promising economic and social reforms, which mostly didn't happen. Since protests started in mid-March, he has replaced his government, signed into effect the end of a decades-old emergency law and abolished a state security court used to try political prisoners. The measures didn't appear to appease protesters.
As gunfire shots sounded in the background, she handed the phone to Abdelkadir and said she was running upstairs, adding quickly, "But the security forces, they only speak the language of bullets."
Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com
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