BEIRUT — Syrian troops sustained their bloody crackdown against anti-government demonstrators in the southern town of Daraa for a second day Tuesday, drawing harsh condemnations but no specific plans for action against Damascus from U.S. and European leaders.
Reports from Daraa were sketchy because telephone lines were cut, the town was surrounded and the nearby border with Jordan was closed, but residents contacted by human-rights groups indicated that government opponents were holding out in a mosque in the center of the town against an onslaught by government soldiers using tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The Associated Press quoted a resident as saying that the bodies of those killed were left unattended in the streets because the gunfire was so intense that citizens were unable to go outside to retrieve them. Human-rights groups said in statements posted on the Internet that at least 35 people had died in two days of violence.
The deployment of the army Monday in the town that had become the epicenter of the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s government seemed to leave little doubt that Syrian authorities have resolved to confront the escalating protest movement with full-scale repression.
The crackdown in the rural town is rapidly approaching Libyan proportions, with one crucial difference: The opposition movement in Syria is not armed.
The escalating violence stirred the fiercest criticism of Damascus yet from world leaders, though there was no indication that the international community was ready to take formal action to condemn or sanction a regime whose collapse many fear could trigger widespread regional instability.
