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Yesterday's Haaretz wrote: If Assad does not use the same murderous force against the protesters that his father Hafez Assad used against tens of thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama 30 years ago, he will not survive...

But today it seems that the Syrian dictator exactly want to smash the protest movement/popular uprising in the same way...

THE DICTATORSHIP STRIKES BACK!

Following weeks of protests, the Syrian regime appears to planning major "security" operation; all land border crossings with neighboring Jordan closed.

Since the early morning hours the Syrian army backed by tanks advance into the restive city of Deraa, in an apparent escalation of a crackdown on the protest movement.
More deaths have been reported in Syria where thousands of troops backed by tanks and heavy armour have swept into the town of Deraa in the south of the country, the large Damascus suburb of Douma and several other cities across the country. "Security" forces also continued a crackdown in the coastal town of Jableh for a second day.

Suhair al-Atassi, a Syrian human rights campaigner, says the Syrian authorities have launched a war against the country's peaceful pro-democracy movement by attacking three cities. Atassi said in a statement sent to Reuters in the early afternoon(local times): "This is a savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats. [...] President Bashar al-Assad's intentions have been clear since he came out publicly saying he is 'prepared for war' in his speech on March 30. I am at my home in Dummar suburb of Damascus. Come and arrest me."

Earlier today Reuters reported the following:

Syrian writers issued a declaration on Monday denouncing a bloody crackdown on protesters, a sign of outrage surging through the intellectual elite as violence has escalated dramatically in recent days.

 
Security forces and gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad stormed the large Damascus suburb of Douma early on Monday, shooting at unarmed civilians and arresting residents, rights campaigners said.

 
"There are injured people. Scores have been arrested. The security are repeating the same pattern in all the centers of the democratic uprising. They want to put down the revolution using the utmost brutality," the rights campaigner told Reuters from Damascus.

 
Residents in the southern town of Deraa, where the protest movement first erupted last month, said security forces backed by armoured vehicles had entered the town overnight and were shooting.

An eyewitness told The Associated Press that he saw at least five corpses after security forces fired on a car... 

 
Also Monday, a senior diplomat in Amman said Syria had closed all its land border crossings with Jordan, following the deployment of Syrian army tanks in Deraa. An official told Reuters the "timing is related to what appears to be a major security operation that is taking place right now".

 
Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 350 civilians since unrest began last month. A third of the victims were killed in the past three days as the scale and breadth of a popular revolt against President Bashar Assad intensified...

 
In some of the latest violence, activists said government troops and gunmen loyal to Assad shot dead at least nine civilians on Sunday in the Mediterranean coastal town of Jabla, where troops deployed following a protest the previous night.

Rights campaigners said they feared Assad's forces were preparing for an attack on the town of Nawa after reports of bulldozers and military vehicles heading there. Thousands of people in the town called for the overthrow of Assad on Sunday at a funeral for protesters killed by security forces.

 
Electricity and communications were cut off in parts of Nawa by the evening and residents, some armed, erected barriers in the streets in preparation to defend against attack.

 
"Long live Syria. Down with Bashar!" mourners chanted during the funeral in Nawa, 25 km north of Deraa.
 

"Leave, leave! The people want the overthrow of the regime."

 
In Banias, south of Jabla, protest leaders said they would cut the main coastal highway unless the siege on Jabla was lifted. Jabla is home to large numbers of members of Assad's Alawite Shi'ite minority who had generally stayed away from protests in the past.

 
Mourning 'martyrs of uprising'

 
Monday's declaration was signed by 102 writers and journalists, in Syria and in exile, representing all the country's main sects, a sign that shock at the violence is crossing Syria's lines of sectarian division.

It called on Syrian intellectuals "who have not broken the barrier of fear to make a clear stand.

 
"We condemn the violent, oppressive practices of the Syrian regime against the protesters and mourn the martyrs of the uprising."

 
Signatories included Alawite figures such as former political prisoner Loay Hussein; female writers Samar Yazbek and Hala Mohammad; Souad Jarrous, correspondent for al-Sharq al-Awsat pan-Arab daily; writer and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh and filmmaker Mohammad Ali al-Attassi.

Mansour al-Ali, a prominent Alawite figure from the city of Homs, was arrested in his home city after he spoke out against the shooting of protesters, an activist in Homs said.

 
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060331,00.html

Related news reports:
☞ Syrian army 'attacks protest city of Deraa' (BBC, 4.25)
☞ Syria sends tanks onto streets (Al-Jazeera, 4.25)
☞ Witnesses: Syrian army crackdown sparks panic (CNN, 4.25)
☞ Syrian tanks and troops move into Deraa (Guardian, 4.25)