US and European sanctions In latest news, An activist with the opposition April 17 Movement in Douma, northeast of Damascus, told Al Jazeera security forces opened fire with live ammunition and tear gas on a large protest of some 6,000 to 7,000 people who marched through the
streets, resulting in five injuries, including one child, but no confirmed fatalities. \"Worshippers from about six or seven mosques came together and marched to the square of the Grand Mosque in Douma,\" said the activist, who calls himself Mohammed al-Ali. \"After about an hour people were heading home when secret police and shabiha [thugs] arrived and opened fire.\" A small protest of around 100 people took place outside the Mousa Bin Nuwser mosque in Deraa’s As Sabil neighbourhood on Friday, an activist with the opposition April 17 Movement who was present told Al Jazeera. \"Before we used to get 2,000 people outside this mosque but now the security forces and shabiha are just waiting for us to utter the word \'freedom\' before they attack us,\" said the activist, a university student known as Abu Hanafe. The protestors chanted for the downfall of the regime, he said, and, \"The people want to execute the president,\" and \"He who kills his own people is a traitor,\" before security forces fired tear gas, which blew back on them and allowed the protestors to escape without arrests made. \"We are exhausted, but not enough to go back to before,\" said Abu Hanafe. \"And it’s not only us who are tired: the regime is tired as well.\"
A video emerged on YouTube showing a crowd thronging around white SUVs, presumably carrying members of the UN delegation, as they drive slowly toward a central roundabout known as Clock Square. Some members of the crowd hold signs in front of the vehicles. As soon as the vehicles have gone, a red police car pulls up and armed members of the security forces are seen gathering in the left of the screen. In the second video, taken from the opposite angle, the security forces are seen with the same red police car. As the small crowd walks towards Clock Square a security man fires a machine gun over their heads. One man appears to be injured in the leg.
Activists reported three people were killed and six injured in Clock Square by security forces in continuing shooting shortly after the departure of the UN team, sent to Homs on August 22 after the UN Human Rights Council ordered an investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the regime in its crackdown on protestors. \"People took risks to go to the square and welcome the delegation,\" said a statement by an activist with the Residents’ Union of Homs in the wake of the visit. \"But unfortunately the delegation was not positive with the people they didn’t speak with them to get their testimony […] They are partners in this massacre.\"
AFP news agency reported that thousands of Syrians flooded streets across the country in anti-regime protests on the last Friday of Ramadan, activists said. Protesters took to the streets in response to calls by The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook group which urged rallies under the banner of \"Friday of patience and determination.\"
Thousands of people demonstrated in the flashpoint central city of Homs, emerging in several neighbourhoods of the industrial hub, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Security forces broke up a demonstration in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, one of the hubs of the protest movement that was launched in mid-March, the rights group said.
They opened fire in the air forcing the protesters to pull back, it said, adding that there were no immediate reports of casualties. 4 people killed in Deir az zour and Doma in protests today.
Protests also took place in Al-Bukamal, a town on the border with Iraq, in the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Kiswah, in Hirak in the south and in the mostly Kurdish-populated city of Qamishli in the northeast, said Omar Idibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees group said.
Reuters news agency reported that forces loyal to President Basharal-Assad fired at protesters demanding his removal in the Damascus suburb of Douma after Friday prayers, as protests flared anew across Syria in a sixth-month-old uprising against autocratic rule, activists said.
\"Protesters phoned in to say that two people have been killed, but this is an initial report still to be confirmed,\" an activist in Damascus told Reuters by phone.
Al Jazeera\'s Nisreen El-Shamayleh reported that heavy gunfire was also heard in Al Qusour district from the Mousa Eben Nusseir mosque in Daraa as well.
The LCC has people on the ground across Syria and is involved in organising  protests against the Assad regime.
Protesters took place in the city of Deraa in Syria following the morning prayer on Friday. People were chanting: \"The people want to topple the regime\". Reuters reported that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed eight people across Syria overnight, activists said on Friday, in a sustained campaign to crush street protests against his rule buoyed by the demise of Muammar Gaddafi\'s power in Libya. Many of the deaths occurred as a result of attacks on street demonstrations demanding an end to 41 years of Assad family domination that have been breaking out daily after Ramadan prayers that follow the breaking of the fast, they said.
\"Congratulations to the Libyan people,\" read signs carried by protesters who marched at night demanding Assad\'s removal in the town of Kisweh, where thousands of refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights live, just south of Damascus.
\"God is with us. The revolution is bringing together the free,\" shouted demonstrators in the resort town of Zabadani, west of the capital and near the border with Lebanon.
Syrian protesters chanted \"Bye, bye Gaddafi, Bashar your turn is coming\" overnight, but President Bashar al-Assad showed few signs of cracking after months of demonstrations and his forces raided an eastern tribal region again on Thursday. The new chant, inspired by the apparent collapse of Muammar Gaddafi\'s rule in Libya, was filmed by residents in the Damascus suburb of Duma after prayers on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Syrian police are hunting for the attackers who broke the hand of the country\'s leading political cartoonist, the official SANA news agency said Friday, after Washington condemned the attack. \"The competent authorities at the Interior Ministry are seeking the culprits in order to bring them to justice,\" the agency said. The US accused Syria of brutalising peaceful protesters after attack on Ali Ferzat, as activists report more deaths. The US has demanded the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stop brutalising peaceful opponents, citing in particular, what it called a \"targeted, brutal attack\" on Syria\'s most popular political cartoonist. Ali Ferzat was attacked after he left his studio early on Thursday and was beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside the Damascus airport. Ferzat\'s brother Asaad told Al Jazeera that his brother was kidnapped at 5 am by five gunmen from outside his home and taken to the airport road. \"He was savagely beaten, they broke his fingers and told him not to satirise Syria\'s leaders,\" Asaad said.
Ferzat remembers the gunmen telling him that \"this is just a warning,\" as they beat him, a relative told The Associated Press news agency.
Ferzat, 60, who is also a longtime human rights advocate, earned international recognition and the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated leaders including Iraq\'s Saddam Hussein, Libya\'s Muammar Gaddafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria\'s Assad family. He drew cartoons about the uprising and posted the illustrations on his private website, providing comic relief to many Syrians who were unable to follow his work in local newspapers because of a ban on his drawings. His illustrations grew bolder in recent months, with some of his cartoons directly criticising Assad, even though caricatures of the president are forbidden in Syria. This week, he published a cartoon showing Assad with a packed suitcase, frantically hitching a ride with a fleeing Gaddafi. Another drawing showed dictators walking a long red carpet that leads them, in the end, to a dustbin.
US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement following Ferzat\'s attack: \"The regime\'s thugs focused their attention on Ferzat\'s hands, beating them furiously and breaking one of them, a clear message that he should stop drawing.\" In her statement, Nuland said: \"Many other moderate activists who oppose violence have been jailed for speaking out against the regime. \"While making empty promises about dialogue with the Syrian people, the Assad regime continues to carry out brutal attacks against peaceful Syrians trying to exercise their universal right to free expression. \"We demand that the Assad regime immediately stop its campaign of terror through torture, illegal imprisonment and murder,\" Nuland added. The remarks came as activists reported at least eight people killed by security forces in street protests overnight, a day after violence in which 11 civilians and eight soldiers were killed.
In other news, Moscow and Beijing boycotted a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday that was held to discuss a draft resolution on Syria. The envoys of Russia and China boycotted the meeting, which was scheduled to discuss a draft resolution that would impose further sanctions and travel bans against 22 Syrian officials and freeze the assets of 23 other top regime figures, including President Bashar al-Assad himself, an Al Arabiya correspondent reported. The sanctions were also to go into effect against four Syrian companies. The draft resolution “strongly condemns the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities, such as arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters and human rights defenders, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, also of children, and expresses profound regret at the deaths of thousands of people including children.”
The resolution “demands an immediate end to the violence” and says “those responsible for violence should be held accountable.” Russia, which has veto power on the council, had earlier said it does not think sanctioning Damascus is the right approach at the moment. China said that it believed there should be more dialogue. Security Council resolutions require nine backers top be passed, and one veto can scuttle a resolution. The United States, France and Britain are also permanent members with veto power.
Arab League ministers will meet in Cairo on Saturday to discuss Syria. An official said they would discuss imposing a time frame for Assad to enact reforms. But they would also call on \"all parties to end the conflict,\" the official said, in an apparent acceptance of Syria\'s argument it faces armed opponents. In an interview with state television this week, Assad said the unrest \"has shifted toward armed acts.\" Authorities blame the violence on \"armed terrorist groups,\" who they say have killed an unspecified number of civilians and 500 soldiers and police.