AL ARABIYA – AGENCIES
- Syrian embassy in Cairo
Dozens of protesters broke into the Syrian embassy in Cairo on Friday to protest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on a 10-month-old anti-regime uprising, Egyptian security sources said.
At least 200 protesters stormed the building, breaking doors and windows, according to a Syrian diplomat who said the protesters destroyed parts of the exterior gate to the compound and breaking into some administrative offices on the first and second floors of the building.
Egyptian security officials arrived and took the protesters out of the building. Mo arrests were made, according to AFP news agency.
“The Syrian embassy has video cameras of the protesters that security forces and guards could not stop or push away from the embassy,” embassy spokesman Emad Arfan said, adding that there were no casualties.
“I believe that this attack was planned and coordinated from earlier,” Arfan said, adding that the embassy would resume business as usual on Sunday.
Arfan called on Egyptian security services to tighten security around the embassy.
The storming of the embassy and the lack of protection point to a “development that does not suit the brotherly relations between Egypt and Syria,” Syrian Ambassador Yusef Ahmed told AFP.
In Syria on Friday, government forces killed at least 35 people, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks during the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
The U.N. Security Council was to meet later in the day to discuss Syria before a possible vote next week on a new Western-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting 10 months of bloodshed.
Syria has been gripped by violence since March, with a regime crackdown on dissent leaving more than 5,400 dead including 384 children, according to U.N. figures.
