Residents reported heavy shelling and warned that hospitals were overflowing with the dead and wounded.
The government said that "armed groups" had burnt police stations and vandalised property. Gunmen had killed two Syrian soldiers, it added.
US officials have described the events as "full-on warfare" by the Syrian government against its own people.
The assault was a last act of utter desperation by the Syrian government, JJ Harder, press attache at the American embassy in the capital, Damascus, told the BBC.
With this latest military operation, the authorities are sending a clear message that they will not tolerate large-scale unrest ahead of the month of Ramadan, when protests are expected to grow, says the BBC's Lina Sinjab in Damascus.
But our correspondent says the people of Hama remain defiant, with some still out in streets shouting: "We will not be killed again," a reference to the 1982 massacre which left tens of thousands dead after President Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, sent in troops to quell an Islamist uprising there.
The recent protests - calling for widespread democratic reforms and political freedoms - show no sign of letting up despite a government crackdown that has brought international condemnation and sanctions.
Activists say more than 1,500 civilians and 350 security personnel have been killed across Syria since protests began in mid-March.
Centre of protests
Hama has been in a state of revolt and virtually besieged for the past month. According to activists on the ground, troops and tanks began their multi-pronged assault at dawn, smashing through hundreds of barricades erected by locals to reach the centre of Hama.
"[Tanks] are firing their heavy machineguns randomly and overrunning makeshift road blocks," a doctor in Hama told Reuters by phone, with machinegun fire in the background.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said medics had confirmed 45 deaths. But the toll could be as high as 100, a London-based spokesman for the group told the BBC.
Some residents said they saw bodies lying in the streets and that electricity and water supplies had been cut.
Security forces snipers were reported to have taken up positions on high buildings, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon.
One local activist said that five tanks had been abandoned by their crews in two parts of town, and that protesters had attacked and burnt down three police stations, our correspondent says.
Another Hama resident told the BBC World Service that the three main hospitals had run out of blood supplies after being overwhelmed by numbers of wounded people.
"They are treating people in the halls of the hospitals. A lot of injured people [have been] taken to homes and doctors are treating them there," he told the BBC's World Today programme.
'State of terror'
He said the protesters had done nothing to provoke the military action.
"For three months, Hama has had huge demonstrations. More than 250 people have been killed, and nothing, no shot has come out from Hama people. Just barricades and stones and wood, that's all," he said. "It's just a 100% civilian uprising."
A Syrian government spokeswoman defended the military operation, saying that the authorities were forced to act because Hama had been in a "state of terror" for the past month.
"There are barricades and roadblocks everywhere. People can't go to work, they can't sit exams... it is simply not acceptable," Reem Haddad told the al-Jazeera television channel.
Elsewhere on Sunday, three people were killed by security forces at Harak in the southern Deraa region, and six in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory.
On Saturday, troops shot dead three people who threw stones at a military convoy sent to quash the near-daily protests in Deir al-Zour, he said.
A total of 20 people were killed and 35 wounded on Friday as hundreds of thousands of protested in cities across Syria, rights groups said.
More than 500 people were arrested in a single operation in the Qadam neighbourhood of the capital Damascus, they added.
Since the start of the unrest, more than 12,600 have been arrested and 3,000 others are reported missing.
The government blames armed Islamist gangs for the unrest, but correspondents say the protests appear largely peaceful, with only isolated cases of residents arming themselves against the military assault.
Most foreign media is banned from the country, making it difficult to verify reports.
Syria's anti-government protests, inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, first erupted in mid-March after the arrest of a group of teenagers who spray-painted a revolutionary slogan on a wall. The protests soon spread, and human rights activists and opposition groups say 1,700 people have died in the turmoil, while thousands more have been injured.
Although the arrest of the teenagers in the southern city of Deraa first prompted people to take to the streets, unrest has since spread to other areas, including Hama, Homs, Latakia, Jisr al-Shughour and Baniyas. Demonstrators are demanding greater freedom, an end to corruption, and, increasingly, the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad.
President Assad's government has responded to the protests with overwhelming military force, sending tanks and troops into at least nine towns and cities. In Deraa and Homs - where protests have persisted � amateur video footage shows tanks firing on unarmed protesters, while snipers have been seen shooting at residents venturing outside their homes.
Some of the bloodiest events have taken place in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour. In early June, officials claimed 120 security personnel were killed by armed gangs, however protesters said the dead were shot by troops for refusing to kill demonstrators. As the military moved to take control of the town, thousands fled to neighbouring Turkey, taking refuge in camps.
Although the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo have seen pockets of unrest and some protests, it has not been widespread - due partly to a heavy security presence. There have been rallies in the capital - one with an enormous Syrian flag - in support of President Assad, who still receives the backing of many in Syria's middle class, business elite and minority groups.
The Assad family has been in power for 40 years, with Bashar al-Assad inheriting office in 2000. The president has opened up the economy, but has continued to jail critics and control the media. He is from the minority Alawite sect - an offshoot of Shia Islam but the country's 20 million people are mainly Sunni. The biggest protests have been in Sunni-majority areas.
Although the US and EU have condemned the violence and imposed sanctions, the UN Security Council has been unable to agree on a response. Some fear the country could descend into civil war if the government collapsed, while others believe chaos in Syria with its strategic location and its web of regional alliances - could destabilise the entire Middle East.
0 comments:
Post a Comment