BEIRUT, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad made his first appearance in public since a July bomb
attack, attending prayers at a Damascus mosque to mark the start of the Muslim
holiday of Eid, state TV showed.
The first day of Eid on Sunday
also gave Assad's opponents a chance to rally and activists reported protests
around Syria, including in the capital, on a holiday that marked the end of the
Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Fighting raged on around Syria,
killing more than 100 people, an activist group reported.
Battling a 17-month-old uprising
against 42 years of rule by his family, Assad was filmed at prayer with his
prime minister and foreign minister but not with his vice president, Farouq
al-Shara, whose reported defection was denied the previous day.
Shaken by a July 18 bomb attack in
Damascus and defections - including that of his last prime minister - Assad's
recent appearances on state TV had previously been restricted to footage of him
conducting official business. He was shown swearing in the new prime minister a
week ago.
Syria's civil war has intensified
since the bombing that killed members of Assad's inner circle, including his
defence minister and brother-in-law.
Assad was pictured on Sunday
sitting cross-legged at a mosque in the Damascus residential district of
Muhajirin listening to a sermon in which Syria was described as a victim of
"terrorism" and a conspiracy hatched by the United States, Israel,
the West and Arabs - a reference to Gulf states which back the revolt.
Sheikh Mohammad Kheir Ghantous
said the plot would not "defeat our Islam, our ideology and our
determination".
Dressed in a suit and tie, Assad
smiled as he greeted officials including senior members of his Baath Party.
In attendance were Foreign
Minister Walid al-Moualem and Prime Minister Wael al-Halki. He is the
replacement for Riyad Hijab, a Sunni who has joined the opposition to Assad
since his defection was announced on Aug. 6.
Hijab was the highest-level Syrian
official to desert the government so far.
With diplomatic efforts to end the
war hampered by divisions between world powers and regional rivalries, Syria is
facing the prospect of a prolonged conflict that threatens to destabilise the
Middle East with its sectarian overtones, pitting a mainly Sunni Muslim
opposition against the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs.
FIGHTING CONTINUES DESPITE START
OF EID
The London-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said more than 100 people had been killed on
Sunday. The figure could not be independently verified. It reported fighting in
Damascus, Deraa and elsewhere despite the start of the Eid holiday.
In the rebel-held village of
Saraja, near the Turkish border, the bereaved visited their relatives' graves,
in accordance with Eid tradition.
"He had four children, he was
my only son," said an elderly woman who identified herself as Umm Jumaa,
speaking in a video obtained by Reuters as she visited the grave of her slain
son.
A trench had been dug nearby in
anticipation of more bodies.
Even as President Assad appeared
in Damascus, videos posted by activists on YouTube showed protests against him
in and around the capital. "Oh martyr, your blood will not go to
waste," chanted protesters in Qudsia, a Damascus neighbourhood, in a
YouTube posting dated Aug. 19.
"The people want divine
protection," chanted several dozen men shown in another video, posted by
activists and dated Aug. 19. It showed a protest at Yabrud, north of Damascus.
What started out last year as a
mostly peaceful protest movement against Assad's rule is now an armed
insurrection.
Government forces have
increasingly resorted to air power to hold back lightly armed insurgents in
Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's largest city and business hub. More than 18,000
people have died in Syria's bloodshed and about 170,000 have fled the country,
according to the United Nations. Aleppo has been the theatre for some of the
heaviest recent fighting. Rebels hold several districts in the country's
largest city and have tried to push back against an army counter-offensive.
U.N. investigators said last week
that government forces and allied militia had committed war crimes, including
murder and the torture of civilians in what seemed to be state-directed policy.
Syrian insurgents had also
committed war crimes, including executions, but on a smaller scale than those
by the army and security forces, according to the investigators.
Syrian state television reported
that government forces had thwarted several attempts by armed groups to infiltrate
Syria from Lebanon, a country whose own fragile stability has been put under
strain by the conflict next door.
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