Syrian forces nabbed scores of civilians in a Damascus neighborhood and the coastal city of Latakia in overnight raids, activists said Wednesday. In the northwestern Idlib province, a bullet killed a man as he stood on his balcony, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,. Troops were carrying out raids in the area at the time, the AP reported.
Earlier Wednesday, a woman died of her injuries two days after she was wounded in Latakia, according to the observatory and The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group. The LCC said a man was killed in the city late Tuesday.
The Damascus raids concentrated in the Kurdish neighborhood of Rukneddine where dozens were detained after electricity was cut in the area, the observatory said. The area has witnessed intense anti-regime protests in the past weeks.
In Latakia, hundreds of security men conducted house-to-house raids in the al-Ramel neighborhood, the observatory and LCC said.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Jordan renewed their call on Damascus to immediately stop the violence. In a joint news conference held on the sidelines of an Islamic nations' meeting to discuss famine in Somalia, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "The bloodshed must stop, all soldiers must be withdrawn from the cities and life in these cities must return to normal." "It's important to stop this raging violence and implement reforms," Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said. "We reject the continuation of the killing."
