DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: The Syrian army consolidated its grip on the hotbed city of Homs Sunday, activists said, as embattled President Bashar Assad sacked the governor of a flashpoint province 48 hours after massive anti-regime protests.
Security forces also rounded up hundreds of civilians in Damascus and made a spate of arrests in the town of Sarakeb in the northwestern province of Idlib near the Turkish border, activists said.

In Homs, troops backed by tanks “deployed heavily in Duar al-Fakhura and around the neighborhood of Al-Nazihin,” said Abdel Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights. He added that the operation was apparently aimed at “preparing to carry out a military and security operation in the region.”
Over 50 people have been killed in the past week in Homs, 160 kilometers north of Damascus, either by army gunfire or in clashes between rival demonstrators, rights activists have said.
They have accused the regime of sowing sectarian strife among the city’s Christians, Sunni Muslims and Assad’s Alawite minority community.

Residents of Homs observed a strike Saturday while the army encircled the city, cutting off its water and electricity.
Meanwhile, authorities blamed “saboteurs” tied to the country’s 4-month-old uprising for the crash and derailment of a passenger train Saturday, 5 kilometers outside the city that killed the driver. Opposition figures dismissed the accusation and said the Syrian state was trying to seize on the crash to blunt growing support for a peaceful uprising calling for democratic change.

Syria’s third-largest city, Homs has spearheaded rallies against Assad since protests erupted on March 15.
The army had already entered the city in May in a bid to stop rallies calling for the fall of the Syrian state, and launched a new operation backed by security forces earlier this week.
The crackdown on dissent prompted condemnations Friday from France and Britain as U.N. officials spoke of possible crimes against humanity being committed in Syria since mid-March.

In Damascus, security forces arrested hundreds of people in an operation targeting the neighborhoods of Qabun and Rukneddin, which has a mostly Kurdish population, Rihawi told AFP in Nicosia by phone.
“Army units set up roadblocks on routes into Qabun, controlling all entry and exit,” he said, adding that they had lists of wanted people.

“Soldiers armed with automatic rifles are deployed at the main routes into Qabun and in front of mosques, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “The security forces also searched homes looking for weapons, and made some arrests,” he added, saying they ransacked homes but emerged empty-handed.

More than 15 people were arrested in the town of Sarakeb in the Idlib countryside, Abdel Rahman told AFP in Nicosia by phone.
Forty-eight hours after Friday’s massive anti-regime protests in the eastern oil hub of Deir Ezzor, Assad dismissed the regional governor, the official SANA news agency reported Sunday.

He issued a decree appointing Samir Othman al-Sheikh to replace Hussein Arnoos as governor, the agency said.
Over 1.2 million Syrians demonstrated Friday in the city of Deir al-Zour and in Hama in the north, according to Abdel Rahman. “More than 1.2 million people marched: in Deir al-Zour there were more than 550,000, and in Hama more than 650,000,” he said.
Earlier in July, Assad replaced the governor of Hama after 500,000 protesters rallied in the opposition bastion calling for the fall of the State.

Deir al-Zour and Hama have been rallying points for pro-democracy protests since mid-March, and Hama has a bloody past. In 1982 an estimated 20,000 people were killed there when the army put down an Islamist revolt against the rule of Assad’s late father, Hafez Assad.
According to the Syrian Observatory, 1,483 civilians are now confirmed dead in the government’s crackdown on dissent since mid-March. The violence also claimed the lives of 365 troops and security forces.