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Armed men abduct 2 police officers, high school student in central Syria: SANA

14 July 2011 19:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Armed men abducted Thursday two police officers and a high school student in the violence-hit city of Hama, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported without further details, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The private al-Watan newspaper said earlier that rioters in Hama had barricaded streets with piles of blazing tyres and stones, adding that local authorities are trying to reach a common ground with those rioters, who attacked Wednesday some Syrian tanks with Molotov cocktails.

The paper said local residents in Hama are fed up with the unbearable situation, citing local residents’ resentment over the economic standstill, which is caused by the closure of most of the markets in the city.

The city of Hama has a storied history of rebellion against the Syrian leadership and was a stronghold of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which staged a bloody rebellion in 1982. It is now witnessing the largest turnout since the eruption of protests in mid-March, and also under a self-declared general strike since two weeks.