UN says Syria deaths top 3,000

Security forces opened fire at protesters, killing at least 11, including a 14-year-old boy, in what has become a weekly ritual of protests met by gunfire, according to activists.

Yesterday’s protests, dubbed “Free Soldiers,’’ were in honor of army officers and soldiers who have sided with the protesters and are reportedly clashing with loyalists in northern and central Syrian cities in an increasing militarization of the uprising.

“The army and people are one!’’ protesters shouted in the southern village of Dael, where most of the deaths occurred yesterday. In other locations, some protesters held up banners that read: “Free soldiers do not kill free people asking for freedom.’’

“I will not serve in an army that destroys my country and kills my people,’’ read a posting on the Syrian revolution’s main Facebook page that was meant to encourage defections.

Yesterday’s demonstrations were the most explicit show of support so far by the country’s protest movement for the defectors. Faced with gunfire, bullets, mass arrests, and a lack of willingness by the international community to intervene militarily, many Syrians now feel the armed dissidents are their only hope to topple Assad’s regime.

The Free Syrian Army, as the dissidents are known, are led by an air force colonel who recently fled to Turkey. The group is said to include more than 10,000 members and is gaining momentum as the first armed challenge to Assad’s authoritarian regime after seven months of largely nonviolent resistance.

Clashes between troops and gunmen believed to be defectors left at least 25 people dead on Thursday, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The group said heavy clashes also took place in a Damascus suburb yesterday.

Analysts say that until the rebels can secure a territorial foothold as an operational launching pad - much like the eastern city of Benghazi was for the Libyan rebels - the defections are unlikely to pose a real threat to the unity of the Syrian army.

Still, the increased military operations have raised concerns that the country may be sliding into civil war.

International intervention, such as the NATO action in Libya that helped topple Moammar Khadafy, is all but out of the question in Syria. Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil. There also is real concern that Assad’s ouster would spread chaos around the region.

Syria is a geographical and political keystone in the heart of the Middle East, bordering five countries with which it shares religious and ethnic minorities and, in Israel’s case, a fragile truce.

Its web of alliances extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shi’ite theocracy. There are worries that a destabilized Syria could send unsettling ripples through the region.

Arab League officials said Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo tomorrow to discuss the situation in Syria after a request for an emergency meeting by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council.

Several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, have pulled their ambassadors out of Syria to protest the government’s brutal crackdown on the protest movement.

A top UN official warned that the unrelenting crackdown by the Assad government could worsen unless further action is taken.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the death toll from seven months of antigovernment unrest in the country rose above 3,000.

“The onus is on all members of the international community to take protective action in a collective and decisive manner, before the continual ruthless repression and killings drive the country into a full-blown civil war,’’ Pillay said in a statement issued in Geneva.

While most in the Syrian opposition still reject military intervention, some now say it’s a necessity.

“What we have unfolding in Syria now is a two-tiered revolution: an armed insurrection and nonviolent protest movement, and the champions of both are morally justified in their position and they need our support,’’ said Ammar Abdulhamid, a US-based exiled Syrian dissident.

He said external military intervention, including logistical and material support to the defectors, is a must to avoid a return to the status-quo.