75 deaths reported in Syria

DAMASCUS, Syria, April 22 (UPI) -- Syrian troops killed at least 75 people when they opened fire on protesters Friday, Amnesty International said.

Witnesses said at least three children were among the dead, The Washington Post reported.

The day was the bloodiest since protests demanding the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad began several weeks ago. The opposition called for a "Great Friday" of protests after weekly Muslim prayers.

Wissam Tarif of Syrian human-rights group Insan told the Post police in Homs in central Syria began shooting as soon as protesters appeared.

"There was no provocation," Tarif said "There were forces being deployed since last night."

Christian churches across the country canceled outdoor Good Friday services.

"All of the Syrian churches have decided this together because of the bad situation and because of the martyrs who have died in recent days, out of respect for them," Bishop Philoxenos Mattias, assistant to the Syriac Orthodox Church patriarchate in Damascus, told The Daily Telegraph of London.

Services for the Christian minorities, estimated at about 2 million people, will still take place inside the churches, but all street processions and public music performances were canceled, he told the newspaper.

Normally, streets in the Christian quarters of Damascus and other cities would have parades by uniformed marching bands and choirboys, and even re-enactments of the crucifixion of Jesus.

"Things are not good here -- how can we celebrate?" a nun speaking from a monastery who asked not to be identified told the newspaper. "People are very sad. We cannot celebrate because of all the martyrs who have lost their lives and because of all the destruction that has taken place. We are only going to pray."

The protests come a day after Assad overturned Syria's half-century-old emergency law in a bid to defuse the popular protests rattling the country for more than a month.

Even as he signed decrees repealing harsh emergency rule in place since 1963 and granting citizens the right to protest peacefully with government approval, Syrian police officers, soldiers and military vehicles amassed in Damascus and Homs, Syria's third-largest city, residents told The New York Times.

A government crackdown this week in Homs, an industrial center with 1.5 million people, dispersed one of the largest gatherings since demonstrations began last month.

Army units also took up positions in and around the city of Daraa in southwestern Syria near the Jordanian border, where the protests first erupted, The Jerusalem Post reported.