Vigils for injured vet, police clear Tenn. protest (AP)

By TERRY COLLINS and JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Terry Collins And Jason Dearen, Associated Press – 1?hr?47?mins?ago

OAKLAND, Calif. – Anti-Wall Street demonstrators held vigils for an Iraq War veteran seriously injured during a protest clash with police in California as some Occupy encampments came under growing pressure from authorities to abandon sites in parks and plazas.

A crowd of at least 1,000 people, many holding candles, gathered Thursday night in Oakland in honor of 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who is hospitalized with a fractured skull.

Many in the crowd shooed away Oakland Mayor Jean Quan who retreated back into City Hall after trying to address them during a tense late-night appearance. She apologized to Olsen during a hospital visit earlier Thursday.

"I am deeply saddened about the outcome on Tuesday. It was not what anyone hoped for, ultimately it was my responsibility, and I apologize for what happened," Quan said in a written statement to protesters late Thursday. "I cannot change the past, but I want to work with you to ensure that this remains peaceful moving forward."

In Nashville, police cracked down overnight on an Occupy protest camp near the Capitol under a new policy setting a curfew for the complex. Officers moved in a little after 3 a.m. and arrested about 30, who were later released after a judge wouldn't sign the warrants. About 20 protesters who stayed on a nearby sidewalk were not arrested and were still there later in the morning as state troopers stood guard at the steps to the Capitol.

Protesters also held a vigil for Olsen in Las Vegas, which drew a handful of police officers. Afterward, protesters invited them back for a potluck dinner.

"We renewed our vow of nonviolence," organizer Sebring Frehner said.

The Marine veteran, who won medals in Iraq, has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the nation, with Twitter users and protest websites declaring, "We are all Scott Olsen."

Joshua Shepherd, 27, a Navy veteran who was standing nearby when Olsen got struck, called it a cruel irony that Olsen is fighting an injury in the country that he fought to protect.

Despite the financial underpinnings of the protests, Olsen himself wasn't taking part out of economic need.

His friends say he makes a good living as a network engineer and has a nice apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. Still, he felt so strongly about economic inequality in the United States that he fought for overseas that he slept at a protest camp after work.

"He felt you shouldn't wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it," said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

It was that feeling that drew him to Oakland on Tuesday night, when the clashes broke out and Olsen's skull was fractured. Fellow veterans said Olsen was struck in the head by a projectile fired by police, although the exact object and who might have been responsible for the injury have not been definitively established. Officials are investigating exactly where the projectile came from.

Even as the vigil was held in Oakland, protest organizers prepared to defy Oakland's prohibition on overnight camping on the now patchy, manure-smelling lawn outside City Hall.

Shake Anderson, an organizer with Occupy Oakland, said half a dozen tents were erected on the plaza by midday Thursday where police armed with tear gas and bean bag rounds disbanded a 15-day-old encampment Tuesday. More than two-dozen tents had been erected as food and supplies arrived late Thursday.

"We believe in what we're doing," Anderson said. "No one is afraid. If anything, we're going to show there's strength in numbers."

Few police were seen in the area during late Thursday, as Quan in her written statement said that she and interim police chief Howard Jordan hope to meet with protesters and urged them again not to camp at the plaza.

Elsewhere across the United States, protesters brushed off pressure from authorities and maintained the camps that have sprung up in opposition to growing economic inequality.

Protesters at San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza braced for a police raid early Thursday that never came. Still, police have warned the protesters that they could be arrested on a variety of sanitation or illegal camping violations.

Officials told protesters in Providence, R.I., that they were violating multiple city laws by camping overnight at a park.

Anti-Wall Street protesters camped out in downtown Los Angeles said they're planning to continue their demonstration indefinitely, although both they and the mayor's office were eyeing alternate sites.

Meanwhile, Olsen has been improving. Doctors transferred him from the emergency room to an intensive care unit and upgrading his condition to fair on Thursday.

Dr. Alden Harken, chief surgeon at Highland Hospital, said Olsen was still unable to speak but had improved dramatically since he was hospitalized unconscious with a fractured skull and bruised brain that caused seizures.

Harken said Olsen was interacting with his parents, who flew in from Wisconsin, doing math equations and otherwise showing signs of "high-level cognitive functioning." The doctor said he may require surgery, but that's unlikely.

"He's got a relatively small area of injury and he's got his youth going for him. So both of those are very favorable," Harken said.

Olsen smiled during Quan's visit and expressed surprise at all the attention his injury has generated, hospital spokesman Vintage Foster said.

His uncle in Wisconsin told The Associated Press that Olsen's mother was trying to understand what had happened.

"This is obviously a heartbreaker to her," George Nygaard said. "I don't think she understands why he was doing this."

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War blamed police for Olsen's injury. Jordan said the next day that Oakland police will investigate whether officers used excessive force.

Police have said they responded with tear gas and bean bag rounds only when protesters began throwing bottles and other items at them.

On Tuesday, Olsen had planned to be at the San Francisco protest, but he changed course after his veterans' group decided to support protesters in Oakland after police cleared a two-week long encampment outside City Hall.

"I think it was a last-minute thing," Shannon said.

A video posted on YouTube showed Olsen being carried by other protesters through the tear gas, his face bloodied. People shout at him: "What's your name? What's your name?" Olsen just stares back.

People at OPSWAT, the San Francisco security software company where Olsen works, were devastated after learning of his injuries. They described him as a humble, quiet man.

Olsen had been helping to develop security applications for U.S. defense agencies, building on expertise gained while on active duty in Iraq, said Jeff Garon, the company's director of marketing.

Olsen was awarded seven medals while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which he left as a lance corporal in November 2009 after serving for four years. One of them was the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

Olsen moved to the Bay Area in July, and quickly found friends in the veterans against the war group.

His tours of duty in Iraq made him more serious, Shannon said.

"He wasn't active in politics before he went in the military, but he became active once he was out ... the experience in the military definitely shaped him," Shannon said.

___

Dearen reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Garance Burke in San Francisco, Julie Watson in San Diego, Lucas L. Johnson II in Nasvhille, Tenn., and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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Pete Seeger and pals attend NYC protest action (AP)

NEW YORK – Folk music legend Pete Seeger joined in the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday night, replacing his banjo with two canes as he marched with throngs of people in New York City's tony Upper West Side past banks and shiny department stores.

The 92-year-old Seeger, accompanied by musician-grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger, composer David Amram, and bluesman Guy Davis, shouted out a verse as the crowd of about 1,000 people sang and chanted.

They marched peacefully over more than 30 blocks from Symphony Space, where the Seegers and other musicians performed, to Columbus Circle. Police watched from the sidelines.

At the circle, Seeger and friends walked to the chant of "We are the 99 percent" and "We are unstoppable, another world is possible." Seeger stopped to bang a metal statue of an elephant with his cane — to cheers from the crowd.

At the center of the circle, Seeger and Amram were joined by `60s folk singer Arlo Guthrie in a round of "We Shall Overcome," a protest anthem made popular by Seeger.

After more singing, Seeger asked for a mic check to tell the crowd: "The words are simple: I could be happy spending my days on the river that flows both way-ay-ays."

During the march, the younger Seeger, in troubadour fashion like his grandfather, walked among the protesters playing songs. Amra took up a flute and others enlivened the night protest with the sounds of the accordion, banjos, and guitars.

At the front of the throng, marchers held American flags and a large blue flag that said: "Revolution Generation ... Debt is Slavery." Along the way, the crowd sang protest songs made popular or written by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and others of the protest era.

Occupy Wall Street began a month ago in lower Manhattan among a few young people, and has grown to thousands around the country and the world. An Associated Press-GfK poll says more than one-third of the country supports the Wall Street protesters, and even more — 58 percent — say they are furious about America's politics.

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Historic rally buoys Israeli social protest movement (Reuters)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Organisers of Israel's biggest rally for economic reform said on Sunday they will begin to fold their tents but social change will move on, driven by weeks of protests that brought hundreds of thousands to the streets.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responding to the latest massive demonstrations by a disgruntled middle class in the country's business center, Tel Aviv, and other cities, stuck fast to his pledge to implement change but not at all costs.

"People now know their strength, it is something addictive and it cannot be stopped," Yonatan Levy, one of the leader of Israel's new social movement, said on Israel Radio.

Organisers said more than 450,000 people took part in Saturday's protests, maintaining pressure on Netanyahu's government to lower living costs and promote social equality.

Police put the number of demonstrators at around 300,000. Rallies on that scale in Israel, with a population of 7.7 million, have been held over issues of war and peace.

The grassroots protest movement has swollen since July from a cluster of student tent-squatters into a countrywide mobilization of Israel's middle class.

Netanyahu's governing coalition faces no immediate threat, but the protests have underscored the potential electoral impact of hundreds of thousands of voters rallying under a banner of "social justice."

Protest leaders said they will pause demonstrations in the coming weeks until a government-appointed reform committee submits its conclusions. They said a tent city in Jerusalem would be dismantled later on Sunday with others to follow.

A large banner at Saturday's Tel Aviv rally -- held in a square surrounded by some of the city's most upscale shops -- called for the state budget to be breached to boost social welfare.

In remarks to his cabinet the morning afterwards, Netanyahu gave no sign he would yield on his refusal to go beyond the budget framework. He said he had broken new ground by appointing the reform committee, which is due to submit recommendations in two weeks' time.

"I intend to act swiftly in the wake of its findings and to maintain the proper balance between social sensitivity and fiscal responsibility," Netanyahu said.

"This balance preserves the economy, the country, its citizens and social welfare in Israel," he added, saying he wanted to avoid the type of economic troubles currently afflicting a number of European countries.

The right-wing Israeli leader, a champion of free market reforms, has cautioned he would not be able to satisfy all the protesters' demands, ranging from tax cuts, to expansion of free education and bigger government housing budgets.

MAKING ITS MARK

Though the turnout on Saturday was lower than the ambitious one million some had hoped for, commentators said the movement had made its mark on Israel by catapulting the economy onto a political agenda long dominated by security concerns and diplomacy.

Some commentators predicted a gradual shift in the national debate to a more divisive question: whether state subsidies for large ultra-Orthodox Jewish families, religious institutions and settlements in the occupied West Bank should be redirected toward funding better services for the general public.

Protest leaders, who have called for national unity, have largely steered clear of that issue. But Nahum Barnea, a popular political columnist, said anger over those politically-charged allocations helped fuel the demonstrations.

"Young middle-class people saw what has been happening in Israeli society over the past several years, and they are sick of it," Barnea wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"They saw ... the flow of money into parasitic sectors, the distorted priorities of preferring building in settlements to fixing what is wrong in society and the rapid enrichment of those close to the seat of power," he said.

Although Israel enjoys a low 5.5 unemployment rate and a growing economy, business cartels and wage disparities have kept many from feeling the benefit. Many protesters come from the middle class that bears a heavy tax burden and sustains the conscript military.

Since it began, the popular movement has upstaged a diplomatic face-off with the Palestinians for U.N. recognition of statehood and has posed the greatest challenge yet to Netanyahu's government, which includes religious and pro-settler parties.

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SF transit blocks cellphones to disrupt protest (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – A decision by San Francisco Bay Area transit officials to cut off cell phone service at some of its stations to thwart a planned protest drew angry response Saturday from one transit board member who said she was shocked that officials acted as "this type of censor."

Bay Area Rapid Transit officials have said they shut down power Thursday evening to cellular towers for stations stretching from downtown to the San Francisco's airport after learning protesters planned to use mobile devices to coordinate its demonstration.

"I'm just shocked that they didn't think about the implications of this. We really don't have the right to be this type of censor," said Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART board. "In my opinion, we've let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that's not fair."

BART Deputy Police Chief Benson Fairow on Friday told KTVU-TV that the agency decided to turn off underground cell service because it received reports that a rowdy group that had protested in July had similar plans.

"It all boils down to the safety of the public," Fairow said. "It wasn't a decision made lightly. This wasn't about free speech. It was about safety."

To some, BART's tactic drew comparisons to those of former president of Egypt to squelch protests demanding an end to his authoritarian rule. Authorities there cut Internet and cellphone services in the country for days earlier this year.

"BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said on its website.

Michael Risher, the American Civil Liberty Union's Northern California staff attorney wrote in blog: "The government shouldn't be in the business of cutting off the free flow of information. Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here in San Francisco."

The ACLU already has a scheduled meeting with BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey on Monday over other issues and Thursday's incident will added to the agenda, spokeswoman Rebecca Farmer said Saturday.

Yet others said while the phone shut-down was worth examining, it may not have impinged on First Amendment rights. Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center, a nonprofit educational organization, said freedom of expression can be limited in very narrow circumstances if there is an immediate threat to public safety.

"An agency like BART has to be held to a very high standard," he said. "First of all, it has to be an immediate threat, not just the mere supposition that there might be one. And I think the response has to be what a court would consider reasonable, so it has to be the minimum amount of restraint on free expression."

He said if BART's actions are challenged, a court may look more favorably on what it did if expression was limited on a narrow basis for a specific area and time frame, instead of "just indiscriminately closing down cell phone service throughout the system or for a broad area."

BART officials were confident the cellphone disruptions were legal. It said in a statement that it's illegal to demonstrate on the platform or aboard the trains, and that it has set aside special areas for demonstrations.

"We had a commute that was safe and without disruption," BART spokesman Jim Allison said Friday.

The demonstrators were going to hold a second protest over the fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill by BART police on July 3 at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station in San Francisco. Hill was shot in the torso by officers responding to reports of a "wobbly drunk" The officers claim Hill came at them with a knife.

Several protesters were taken into custody after a demonstration on July 11 disrupted service during the rush-hour commute and prompted the closing of BART's Civic Center station.

BART has been battling image problems after a white officer fatally shot an unarmed black passenger on New Year's Day 2009 at an Oakland train station that led to violent protests.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed

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Malaysia fires tear gas at protest, arrests 1,667 (AP)

By SEAN YOONG and EILEEN NG, Associated Press Sean Yoong And Eileen Ng, Associated Press – 2?hrs?57?mins?ago

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – At least 20,000 Malaysians defied government warnings by marching for electoral reforms Saturday, as police fired tear gas and detained more than 1,600 in the country's biggest political rally in four years.

The crackdown on the opposition-backed demonstration in Malaysia's main city, Kuala Lumpur, triggered criticism that Prime Minister Najib Razak's long-ruling coalition was unwilling to allow public dissent or make election laws fairer ahead of national polls widely expected by mid-2012.

Najib's administration declared the rally illegal and warned people repeatedly over the past month to avoid it. Officials insisted it was simply an opposition scheme to spark chaos and stir anti-government sentiment, while activists accused authorities of being afraid of a protest that could undermine their authority.

Authorities blocked roads, shut rail stations and deployed trucks with water cannons near the Independence Stadium in downtown Kuala Lumpur where activists sought to gather. More than 200 activists had been arrested over the past two weeks for promoting the rally.

The large number of demonstrators who showed up despite the threat of arrests and the disruptions in transport links bolstered claims by activists that the government had misjudged public opinion by not allowing what they insisted would have been a peaceful rally.

The crackdown "stirred a sense of outrage against the exhibition of raw power by our government," said Ambiga Sreenavasan, head of the Bersih coalition of civic groups that organized the rally.

"What is the necessity for a show of might against right? No matter what, right will always prevail," she said.

Police said in a statement that they detained 1,667 people Saturday in a clampdown called "Operation Erase Bersih." Those arrested included several senior opposition officials. Some were released after several hours, with police indicating that most would not be held overnight.

Thousands tried to reach the stadium from various parts of Kuala Lumpur, chanting "Long live the people" and carrying yellow balloons and flowers as they marched.

Police fired numerous rounds of tear gas and chemical-laced water in repeated attempts to disperse the crowds, causing demonstrators to scatter into nearby buildings and alleys before they regrouped. Police helicopters flew overhead as a brief downpour failed to deter the protesters.

Witnesses said riot police armed with batons charged at some protesters and dragged them into trucks. Some were seen bleeding, but police could not confirm any injuries.

Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's top opposition figure, was being treated at a hospital for a "minor injury" he said he received when his group was hit by tear gas. The Malaysiakini news website said he had a knee injury.

"We were attacked from both corners but what was horrifying is that the police shot directly at the protesters, some of them clearly aimed at me personally, so my security assistants had to cover me and one was badly injured because the canister was shot direct, he is badly injured," Anwar told Associated Press Television News. "This is a simple portrayal of the extent of desperation of brutal action approved by the Prime Minister Najib."

The demonstrators dispersed after a five-hour standoff with police. Only several hundred reached the stadium.

Prime Minister Najib insisted Saturday the protesters only represent a minority, and that most Malaysians support his administration.

"If there are people who want to hold the illegal rally, there are even more who are against their plan," the prime minister was quoted as saying by the national news agency, Bernama.

Organizers said 50,000 took part in the rally, but police claimed there were only up to 6,000. Other observers and participants said the total was between 20,000 and 30,000, noting that it was highly unlikely that police could have arrested a quarter of the demonstrators. An accurate count was impossible because they were scattered in various areas.

The rally has galvanized the opposition and has been credited for a surge in political awareness among the public in recent weeks.

Opposition leaders accuse Najib's National Front coalition of relying on fraud to preserve its 54-year grip on power, which has been eroded in recent years amid mounting complaints about corruption and racial discrimination. The government insists the current electoral policies are evenhanded.

The activists' demands include an overhaul of voter registration lists, tougher measures to curb fraud and fairer opportunities for opposition politicians to campaign in government-linked media. The National Front's mandate expires in mid-2013 but many analysts expect elections to be called by next year.

Supporters of the Bersih coalition were also planning solidarity marches over the weekend in foreign cities, including in Australia, Britain, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and the United States.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. has been communicating to Malaysia the importance of respecting human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly.

"We consider it incumbent on all sides to refrain from violence," she told a news conference Friday.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

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Over 1,400 arrested, tear gas fired in Malaysia protest (Reuters)

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysian police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained over 1,400 people in the capital on Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak's government.

At least a dozen people were hurt in the demonstration for electoral reform in downtown Kuala Lumpur. There were no reports of serious injuries but some analysts said the police action was excessive and would dent Najib's image.

"We are not criminals, we are just asking for free and fair elections," opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar, told reporters after her father was knocked down and hurt in a melee when he and his supporters were tear gassed.

"Many innocent people were injured. We condemn this act of cruelty by UMNO and Barisan Nasional," she said, referring to Najib's party and the ruling coalition.

Street protests are rare in this Southeast Asian nation, but foreign investors are worried that any groundswell of anti-government sentiment could delay economic reforms seen as essential to draw investment.

If he is put under popular pressure, Najib may reconsider plans for a snap election and hold back on reforms such as cutting fuel subsidies or unwinding an affirmative action program for the country's Malay majority.

Polls are not due until 2013 but analysts have said Najib could seek an early mandate after economic growth accelerated to a 10-year high in 2010.

"From Najib's perspective, holding elections anytime soon would be a mistake because of the damage that has been done today," said Bridget Welsh, Malaysia specialist at Singapore Management University.

"The fact that such a large crowd turned up despite a crackdown shows that voter anger is deep and this is going to push a lot of people who are in the middle toward the opposition."

Reuters witnesses saw tear gas shells lobbed repeatedly at groups of protesters in downtown Kuala Lumpur as the crowds chanted "Long Live the People" and "Reformasi, reformasi," the Malay word for reform.

Several people were seen bleeding after the tear gas was fired, but police gave no details of any injuries. Crowds around the city's main bus station were also sprayed with water cannon.

Malaysia's inspector-general of police, Ismail Omar, said 1,401 people were taken into custody, but many will be released after questioning. At least three senior opposition leaders were among those detained, other officials said.

"We have made our point that we want free and fair elections," said Chan Mei Yin, a 32-year old accountant who joined the protest.

"The police are just showing that they are brutal to Malaysians. I will not vote for this government."

NOT THAILAND

While Malaysia is far from being divided by political strife like its northern neighbor Thailand, the opposition has been steadily growing more vocal.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets at a November 2007 rally, which analysts said galvanized support for the opposition ahead of record gains in a 2008 general election.

Analysts said the turnout of protesters on Saturday was more than 10,000, around the same as in 2007. Police, however, put the number at 5,000-6,000, while protest organizers claimed 50,000 attended.

"Malaysian civil society is showing the government that intimidation will not work," said Ooi Kee Beng, a political analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies of Singapore.

"We're seeing a lack of will on the part of the government to try to negotiate and to defuse the situation. It's all going to look very bad outside Malaysia."

After Malaysia's constitutional monarch tried to defuse the situation, the government initially offered Bersih (Clean), the group that called the protest, the use of a stadium to hold its demonstration.

But it baulked at allowing the group to use the main stadium in downtown Kuala Lumpur, at which point Bersih said it would defy the ban.

From midnight, police locked down the central shopping district of the city of 1.6 million people, setting up roadblocks and barring taxis and buses from the area. Suburban trains, however, continued to operate and other areas of the city were not affected.

Bersih has vowed to bring together tens of thousands of supporters to the protest but it fell short. Still, some analysts said the government faced a problem.

"Just looking at the crowd there were many 'first timers', young people from the Facebook generation who just wanted to have a peaceful life," said Ibrahim Suffian, director of the independent opinion polling outfit Merdeka Center.

"This is trouble for Najib as it will polarize traditionally non-political segments of society like the young even further away from him."

Najib took power in 2009, and inherited a divided ruling coalition which had been weakened by historic losses in the 2008 polls. He has promised to restructure government and economy and introduced an inclusive brand of politics aimed at uniting the country's different races.

Najib's approval ratings have risen from 45 percent to 69 percent in February, according to independent polling outfit Merdeka Center. But analysts said recent ethnic and religious differences have undermined his popularity.

(Additional reporting by Angie Teo and Damir Sagolj; Writing by Liau Y-Sing; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Sugita Katyal)

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Six Syrians killed as 500,000 protest against Assad (AFP)

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syrian security forces killed at least six demonstrators as more than half a million people took to the streets across the country on Friday to demand the departure of Bashar al-Assad, activists said.

The protests came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said time was running out for the Syrian president, as he pursues a violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists that has killed more than 1,300 people since mid-March.

At least three people died in the central city of Homs when security forces opened fire, two were killed in Damascus and one in Daraya, near the capital, activist Ammar Qorabi told AFP in Nicosia.

Qorabi, who runs the National Organisation of Human Rights and is based in Egypt, said by telephone that a seventh person was killed on Friday in an unrelated drive-by grenade attack.

State television gave a conflicting toll, saying gunmen killed one demonstrator in Damascus and two people in Homs, one a policeman.

Waves of protesters flooded the streets nationwide to demand the fall of the regime, with varying reports putting the turnout in the central city of Hama alone at more than half a million.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, spoke of 500,000 protesters and said this was "the biggest demonstration since the Syrian Revolution broke out" on March 15.

Another activist said that "more than 400,000 marched," adding that "they came from all over, from mosques and nearby towns."

A third said more than 200,000 had gathered in the city's Assi Square, stretching for more than one kilometre, and that there was no sign of security forces.

Hama has a bloody past. In 1982, an estimated 20,000 people were killed when the army put down an Islamist revolt.

Demonstrations also gripped the protest hub of Homs where one activist said "more than 100,000 people" protested in several districts as tanks were deployed.

Abdel Karim Rihawi, president of the Syrian League for Human Rights, said "tens of thousands of protesters headed towards Deir Ezzor's Freedom Square upon leaving the mosques" after the weekly prayers in the eastern oil hub on the Euphrates River.

In Jabal al-Zawiyah, which has been the theatre of army operations since Tuesday, "tens of thousands of people started to march from the village towards Maaret al-Numan," he told AFP.

State television reported pro-regime demonstrations in the northern commercial hub of Aleppo and in Suweida, in the south, with people chanting "God, Syria, Bashar and that's it."

Overnight, Abdel Rahman said security forces killed three civilians in Jabal al-Zawiyah, and explosions were heard in the coastal city of Latakia.

Meanwhile Clinton criticised the Assad regime's incoherence in authorising an opposition meeting while stifling dissent.

"Allowing one meeting of the opposition in Damascus is not sufficient," she told reporters on a visit to Lithuania.

"I'm just hurt by recent reports of continuing violence on the border and in Aleppo, where demonstrators have been beaten, attacked with knives by government-organised groups and security forces," Clinton said.

"It is absolutely clear that the Syrian government is running out of time. There isn't any question about that."

Friday's protests followed a call from the Facebook group, The Syrian Revolution 2011 group, which called on people to rally, branding July 1 "the Friday of departure" and saying in a message to Assad: "We don't love you... Go away, you and your party."

Hundreds of protesters in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub, were beaten back on Thursday by baton-wielding security forces, activists said.

On Thursday, the opposition announced the creation of a "national coordination committee" of exiled dissidents and opponents at home to push for democratic reforms.

The announcement came after about 160 dissidents, several of whom have spent years in jail, gathered Monday in Damascus, vowing to press ahead with a "peaceful uprising for freedom and democracy and pluralism to establish a democratic state through peaceful means."

The dissidents demanded the right to demonstrate peacefully, the release of political prisoners, freedom of the press, the safe return of refugees and moves to prevent foreign intervention.

The Observatory says 1,360 civilians have been killed since mid-March and that 343 security force personnel have also died. Thousands have been arrested.

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