19 reported dead in marches across Syria

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 15 (UPI) -- Syrian security forces fired on huge protests across the country Friday, killing at least 19 people, opposition activists said.

Seven of the victims died in Qaboun and other suburbs of Damascus, The New York Times reported. Other deaths came in Homs, the northwestern province of Idlib and the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March.

"Daraa is still under siege," said local activist Anwar Farres. "Nothing has changed. They're still sending more and more security forces here."

The theme of this week's protest was "Friday of Freedom for Prisoners," more than 12,000 of whom have been jailed, al-Jazeera reported.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told al-Jazeera 350,000 protesters marched in the northeastern Kurdish city of Deir al-Zour and 150,000 in Hama.

Security forces and pro-regime vigilantes attacked protesters near Damascus and Aleppo with clubs, activists told the Los Angeles Times.

U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford, who enraged the Assad regime by visiting Hama last week, told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview posted Thursday: "I have seen no evidence yet, in terms of hard changes on the ground, that the Syrian government is willing to reform at anything like the speed demanded by the street protesters. If it doesn't start moving with far greater alacrity, the street will wash them away."