In London, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the
shooting of Islamist inmates. The group said the casualty count at Saydnaya
exceeded 30.
"The number of the dead are in the tens," the exiled Syrian group said
in a statement. "Prisoners have gone to the roof, fearing for their lives.
Military police elements are still firing live bullets. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights demands that President Bashar Assad intervenes
immediately to stop this massacre."
Saydnaya is a maximum security facility that contains 1,500 inmates,
nearly all of them convicted by Syria's military courts. Most of the
prisoners were suspected of being members of the outlawed Brotherhood.
The human rights groups said Islamist inmates took nine prison guards
and officials hostage during an assault by authorities. Another group of
military police was surrounded and agreed to surrender its weapons to the
inmates.
The riot was regarded as one of the worst since the early 1980s, when
the Syrian Army killed thousands of Brotherhood members. Many of the
Brotherhood members were inmates slain in Aleppo after a failed
assassination attempt against Assad's father, then-President Hafez Assad.
