Massacre Fears As Tanks Roll Towards Hama

Syrian tanks and troops are advancing on the city of Hama as fears grow for the welfare of the city's inhabitants.

Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands maintained a week-long protest in the centre of the city after the military apparently deserted it.

Hama was the site of one of the Middle East's most notorious massacres in 1982.

Its residents fear history may be about to repeat itself 30 years after tens of thousands were killed when Syrian artillery shelled the city after an Islamist uprising.

Hama faces a deadly backlash for daring to take on the Assad regime which had appeared to have lost control of the city last week.

Syrian officials have insisted in recent weeks that peaceful protests are in fact allowed in the country.

It is now sending armoured columns and infantry into Hama to suppress what appear to have been entirely non-violent mass demonstrations.

Syrian troops have opened fire on residents who set up makeshift roadblocks to prevent the advance of tanks which are now said to be ringing the town.

The main opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), said at least 67 have been wounded and 13 killed - one of whom was a child.

Residents have been burning tyres and setting up barriers to keep the military out, Rami Abdul-Rahman, the London-based director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the Associated Press news agency.

"There is an open civil defiance in Hama.

"There is a kind of determination not to submit to any tanks or military vehicles," Abdul-Rahman said, citing accounts from doctors and witnesses at the scene.

The all-out military assault comes just five days before a regime-sponsored summit which was called to discuss reform plans.

The Assad government faces a dilemma with Hama.

It can either allow it to remain a focus of mass protest on the main highway between the country's two largest cities.

Or it can risk a repeat of 1982's atrocity - and further international condemnation.

In 14 weeks of protests, Syrian security forces have killed many hundreds of their own people, according to multiple sources inside the country.

They have been allowed to continue doing so with the international community unwilling or unable to apply sufficient pressure on the regime to stop.

But they have failed to quell the unrest and prevent tens of thousands of Syrians marching every Friday, and some days in between, calling for the regime to fall.

:: A Syrian opposition leader has told Sky News that there will be no negotiations with the Assad regime, unless the deadly crackdown on protesters comes to an end.