Syria broadens crackdown on protesters,hundreds arrested

The crackdown from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria seemed to mark a decisive turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

At least 30 tanks were said to be inside Baniyas,one of Syrias most restive locales,where the military entered Saturday. Activists and human rights groups said they had almost no information about the coastal town of 50,000,but one activist said at least six people were killed and 250 arrested since the operation began.

Fighting was also reported in Homs,Syrias third-largest city,where tanks entered Friday. Wissam Tarif,the executive director of Insan,a Syrian human rights group,said that 14 people had been killed there,but he could not confirm the casualties in Baniyas. He said that the military had also entered Tafas,a town in southern Syria. This is a campaign thats going to more cities, he said. A a 12-year-old child was killed when tanks and troops charged into the Bab Sebaa,Bab Amro and Tal al-Sour districts of Homs,according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tarif said that his group had documented the arrest of 750 people,most of them in the suburbs of Damascus,but he had no precise figures for Homs and Baniyas.

Since the beginning of the uprising,Syria has barred most foreign journalists,and many accounts have relied on groups like Tarifs and networks of activists inside the country.