By Bassem Mroue

Associated Press 
 

BEIRUT: Syrian troops pounded a central town with artillery and gunfire Thursday, renewing attacks in an area that has been largely cut off from outside contact for six days.
At least 15 people died, bringing the total killed there to 72, activists said.Members of Syria’s fragmented opposition meeting in Turkey Thursday called on President Bashar Assad to step down and vowed to work together to lobby world leaders for a U.N. Security Council decision calling for his trial.

Mohammad Abdullah, an exiled Syrian journalist, said that the meeting’s closing statement urged Assad to hand power to his vice president and hold free parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.
The conference also elected a 31-member council to coordinate support for the protests in Syria, lobby world leaders and document state violations during the uprising. What started as street demonstrations calling for reforms evolved into demands for Assad’s ouster in the face of the violent crackdown, especially in Syria’s south and center, where the challenge to his family’s 40-year-rule is seen as strongest.
Activists say more than 1,100 people have died in the crackdown and 10,000 have been detained. But it hasn’t slowed the protests.

A resident of Rastan, a protest stronghold in central Syria, said the town’s electricity was cut. He said troops bombed the water supply as well as a mosque and the sports complex.
“We have become refugees in our own country,” said the man reached by telephone who said he fled his home in the town center to escape arrest and was sleeping in the woods.
“My family and sisters are still there, and I don’t know how they are doing,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
He said army units entered some neighborhoods and were making arrests.
Assad’s government has shown no signs of relenting and got a strong signal of support Thursday from Russia, a close ally.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a warning to protesters, saying that overthrowing Assad’s regime by force will have “catastrophic consequences.”
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to have Russia, China and some Arab countries in mind as she said nations slow to denounce the Syrian crackdown should get on what she called “the right side of history.”

The Syrian government freed hundreds of political prisoners Wednesday in an amnesty and the president set up a committee for national dialogue, but the concessions, unimaginable only months ago, have already been rejected by the protesters as too little, too late.
“The one who needs the amnesty is the killer,” said Molham Aldrobi, a representative of Syria’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who attended the conference in Antalya, Turkey.

The Local Coordination Committees, which help organize and document Syria’s protests, said a 4-year-old girl was among the most recent deaths in the town of Rastan, where a total of 58 have been killed in the past three days. The nearby towns of Talbiseh and Teir Maaleh, which like Rastan have seen persistent protests, have also come under attack.
There were no reports of protests Thursday in Homs but the Syrian opposition called for nationwide demonstrations Friday to commemorate the nearly 30 children killed in the uprising.