The forces in Syria have turned the screw in their clampdown on a democracy movement, arresting more than 100 people including two prominent activists, rights groups said, on the eve of more mass rallies. Syrian security forces armed with machine guns and other weapons arrived in the town of Qatana, 25 kilometers south of Damascus, on pickup trucks and carried out the arrests before searching for more protesters. This sweep came as people took to the streets of Damascus and Qatana to protest after security forces killed 11 people on Wednesday in Kanaker, 50 kilometers southwest of the capital, said the human rights activists.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that among those said to have been detained were two prominent members of a national coordination committee for democratic change in Syria. The Observatory said that security forces in Damascus on July 27 arrested two known Syrian opposition figures Nizar al-Samadi and Adnan Wehbe, adding, that their fate remains unknown. Wehbe is known as a leader of the Democratic Socialist Arab Union Party while Samadi is a well-known Islamic personality from Douma, a protest hub in Damascus’s other suburbs.

Around 100 other people were arrested in overnight raids on houses in Damascus, the London-based Observatory said. The Observatory said that a demonstration was held on Wednesday night on Khaled Ben al-Walid Avenue in Damascus, bringing together many young women and men who blocked the avenue for a short time. It said that one hundred young people also marched in several neighborhoods calling for the fall of the regime. Activists said that protests also took place after evening prayers in Qatana in support of Kanaker, a town of 250,000 people west of Damascus where forces killed some 11 people on Wednesday, including a child aged seven.

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