Boy, 12, among victims in Syria

A boy was among at least 11 protesters killed in Syria as security forces targeted cities where thousands attended anti-government rallies against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, activists said.

At least three died yesterday and Omar Khalouf, 12, was killed Monday with two adults in Hama, where tanks had been deployed at the edge of the city north of the capital, Damascus, said Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights.

Security forces killed three protesters in Maarat al-Numan and at least two in a Damascus suburb, said Merhi and Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

At least 50 people were wounded in Hama, where rallies July 1 and 2 drew as many as 400,000, they said in phone interviews. Nasser al-Shami, a boxer who won a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, was among those injured yesterday, Merhi said.

Hama was the site of an uprising in 1982 that was crushed by Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, leaving about 10,000 dead, according to Human Rights Watch.

Pro-government forces have killed more than 1,500 people since the start of the unrest, according to Qurabi and Merhi.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said July 1 that Assad is "running out of time" to meet the protesters' demands. A U.S.-led effort to get the UN Security Council to condemn the violence was blocked by China and Russia.

Hundreds have been arrested in Hama, in the Damascus suburbs of Harasta and Douma, in the province of Idlib in the north and in the southern province of Daraa, where the rallies against Assad's rule began in mid-March, the activists said.