BEIRUT — Thousands of Syrian security forces fanned out Saturday through suburbs of the capital, Damascus, in search of regime opponents, while five others were killed in raids across the country, activists said.
The raids came as the Arab League’s secretary-general announced that the 22-nation organization would dispatch a delegation to Syria this week to persuade it to stop firing on protesters.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 5,000 soldiers and policemen set up checkpoints and conducted house-to-house searches in the Damascus suburbs of Zamalka, Hammouriyeh, Irbin and Saqba.
The Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist network, said five people were killed in the central city of Homs, in the northern Idlib province and in the countryside near the central city of Hama on Saturday.
The raids come a day after 25 people were reported killed across the country when security forces fired on anti-regime protesters who poured into the streets, energized by the death of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.
The United Nations says more than 3,000 people have died since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad began in mid-March.
The Observatory for Human Rights also said it had documented a total of 114 civilian deaths and arrest of more than 2,100 people so far this month in Homs alone. The city is a center of anti-Assad activism.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum conference in Jordan that an Arab ministerial committee led by the prime minister of Qatar will travel to Damascus on Wednesday.
The League met in Cairo last week and gave Syria until the end of this month to enact a cease-fire and start a national dialogue with the opposition, pledging to meet again to consider new options should Syria refuse.
The committee was tasked with making contacts to start a national dialogue between Syrian officials and the opposition that would take place at the League’s headquarters in Cairo.
EGYPT
Egypt’s state media said Saturday that a Cairo court has sentenced a man to three years in prison for postings on Facebook deemed to be inciting sectarianism and in contempt of Islam.
The MENA state news agency said Saturday that a misdemeanor court found Ayman Mansour had intentionally mocked Islam and used “outrageous and scurrilous” language in describing the religion’s holy book, the Koran, and its prophet and believers.
The court said freedom of belief doesn’t excuse contempt that may offend believers and “subject the regime and the country’s security to serious dangers.”
TUNISIA
The head of Tunisia’s main Islamist party, the largest and best organized in the North African country, warned that any fraud in the first truly free elections could plunge the nation into chaos.
Rachid Ghannouchi of the Ennahda, or Renaissance, party said in an interview Saturday, the day before the voting, that while he was pleased with the electoral process thus far, 50 years of fraudulent elections is a difficult legacy to overcome.
Today, Tunisians will take the next step in their revolution that overthrew a president of 23 years last January and will elect an assembly to write their new constitution.
“We caution against any fraud which would be a disaster for the country as a whole and lead to chaos,” said Ghannouchi, who returned to the country in January after 20 years of exile in London while the Islamist movement was banned in Tunisia. “The people would not accept or allow that to happen and we are part of the people.”
Information for this article was contributed from Beirut by Zeina Karam, from Southern Shuneh, Jordan, by Jamal Halaby and from Tunis, Tunisia, by Paul Schemm and Bouazza Ben Bouazza of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 11 on 10/23/2011