Syrian Leader Sacks Strife-Hit Governor

Syrian President Bashar al Assad has sacked the governor of a key central city in the latest attempt to appease an uprising against his authoritarian rule.

State-run Sana news agency announced that Mr Assad has fired the governor of Hama, Ahmad Khaled Abdulaziz, without giving details or reasons for the sacking.

Hama has seen one of the deadliest government crackdowns during more than three months of protests against the Assad regime, where up to 200,000 people were said to be demonstrating in defiance.

Sky's Jeremy Thompson, reporting from Damascus, said Hama has deep resonance for the Syrian population.

"It takes the country back almost 30 years to the days of an Islamist uprising there by the Muslim Brotherhood that was eventually quelled by President Assad's father, who was the then president."

Footage of the current unrest in Hama shows scenes reminiscent of Tahrir Square in Cairo during the protests last spring, and similarly the army and police have retreated.

The news comes after Syrian forces allegedly killed 24 protesters as hundreds of thousands took to the streets for fresh anti-government protests following Friday prayers.

The Local Coordination Committee, a group of grassroots activists, has given Sky News a full list of the dead - which they named as martyrs - with locations where they died.

Many were killed in the Idlib province in the north, near to the Turkish border, where there appears to be a battle between Syrian tanks and opposition supporters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed another three people died on Thursday night during a military operation to stop the flow of refugees into Turkey.

The protests are one of the largest outpourings against the regime of President Bashar al Assad since the uprising started three months ago.

They are being staged in the suburbs of Damascus, near the Lebanese border, in desert regions bordering Iraq and in northern Idlib province.

Thousands of Kurds marching in Amouda in the north-east carried placards demanding: "Bashar, get out of our lives", according to a video.

In Hama and Kurdish eastern areas, demonstrators carried red cards to symbolise the "sending off" of the president.

Syrian rights groups claim more than 1,400 have been killed since mid-march, most of them unarmed protesters.

The regime disputes the toll, blaming "armed thugs" and foreign conspirators for the unrest that is the biggest ever challenge the Assad family's 40-year ruling dynasty.

This latest violence came as Sky News reports from Syria and after our team exclusively filmed pictures of violence in its second city of Aleppo on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she is "disheartened" by the reports of continued violence and warned the regime was "running out of time".

"They are either going to allow a serious political process that will include peaceful protests to take place throughout Syria and engage in a productive dialogue with members of the opposition and civil society, or they're going to continue to see increasingly organized resistance," she said.

Protesters have been demonstrating for 15 weeks against the president's rule. He has now promised a national dialogue on political reforms.

On June 27, a rare platform was given to the opposition when the regime allowed a conference in Damascus attended by 150 intellectuals.

The LCC listed the dead as: Qasem Neyoul (Lattakia), Ismael Qarah Hasan (Aleppo)Waled Sayd (Homs), Diaa Najar (Homs), Nader Saied (Homs), Abdulmuhaimen Masri (Homs), Murhaf Masri (Homs), Shaker Shahen (Homs), Nor Faisal (Homs), Rashed Dured (Damascus), Mohamad Qadri (Damascus), Mohamad Saied Maarieh (Idlib), Nori Batkhah (Idlib), Mohamad Satouf Haboub (Idlib), Samer Maksos (Idlib), Marytr from Dabah family (Idlib), martr from Raham family (Idlib), Mahmod Khatib (Idlib), Ahmad Taleb Khate (Idlib), Mohamad Khaled Mahmoud, Mustafa Ahmad Serjay, Idlib, Mohamad Ahmad Sheghri (Idlib), Ibrahim Taher Zeraah (Idlib), Mousa Abdoullah Seray (Idlib).

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