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CAIRO – Gunfire and shelling rattled a municipality in central Syria on Sun and killed a 12-year-old boy, as President Bashar Assad's dominating program swollen its expeditionary crackdown on a seven-week uprising by sending tanks and reinforcements to key areas, activists said.

Activists said polity also inactive a 10-year-old boy, ostensibly to penalise his parents, and filed charges against a directive opposition amount who is pain from cancer.

The literal circumstances of the boy's modification in the municipality of Homs were unclear. Like individual added trouble spots, the polity has answered protests there by sending in tanks and soldiers to accolade it soured and cutting phone service to yield it modify more isolated.

The continued crackdown suggests that Assad's program is determined to modify the uprising by obligate and intimidation, despite apace escalating planetary outrage and a modification sound that has lidded 580 civilians since the unrest began in mid-March, according to rights groups.

The polity disputed the civilian sound and says most 100 soldiers hit been killed.

On Sunday, the state-run programme authority SANA said section forces were pursuing "armed terrorist groups" in the cities of Daraa, Homs and Banias, and that sextet Asiatic soldiers, including threesome officers, were killed in clashes.

The inform also said 10 Syrians workers who were on their way backwards to Syria from Lebanon were killed in an trap by armed terrorist groups on the Damascus-Homs highway.

The ingest of resistless obligate to modify an uprising worked for Syria's nearby associate Iran when it suppressed the 2009 Green Revolution triggered by a disputed statesmanly election. It has also worked for the Gulf commonwealth of Bahrain.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on threesome grownup Asiatic officials as well as Syria's info authority and Iran's Revolutionary Guard over the crackdown. The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on Asiatic officials soon, and the U.N. said Sat it is sending a team into Syria to analyse the situation.

SANA said hundreds of Syrians held a demonstration Sun in face of the U.S. Embassy in Damascus to oppose "U.S. participation in the country's internal affairs."

The expeditionary and section forces carried discover collar sweeps and posted snipers on rooftops in flashpoints crossways the land Sunday, including Homs, the inshore municipality of Banias and the gray municipality of Daraa, where the uprising began, activists said.

Hundreds were inactive in Banias, including a 10-year-old pupil in what appeared to be a move fashioned to penalise the child's parents, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, administrator of the Asiatic Observatory for Human Rights.

"Banias is a municipality of ghosts today, it's blank and totally unaccompanied from the rest of Syria," said Ammar Qurabi of Syria's National Organization for Human Rights. "There's a de facto curfew and grouping are not feat out," he said.

Qurabi also said tanks entered threesome villages nearby Daraa — Tafas, Atman and Daael.

In Daraa, section forces allowed grouping to become discover for some hours to acquire essentials but then imposed a curfew. Thousands hit been arrested.

"The prisons are full, they are today putting detainees in schools and added open buildings," he said.

Also Sunday, Qurabi said Asiatic judicial polity hit formally filed charges against Riad Seif, a directive opposition amount and past leader who has been an communicatory critic of the program during the uprising.

Seif, who suffers from cancer, was live with staging a oppose without a permit. He was detained Friday, the important day for protests in the Semite world.

The nationwide uprising has posed the most earnest challenge to the Assad family's 40-year judgement dynasty.

The unrest was triggered by the arrests of teenagers caught scrawling anti-government graffiti on walls in Daraa, a gray municipality nearby the abut with Jordan. Despite boasts by Assad that his commonwealth was insusceptible from the category of uprisings sweeping the Semite world, protests against his rule apace spread crossways the land of 23 meg people.

Assad, who inherited noesis from his father in 2000, has blamed "armed thugs" and foreigners. The program has hit backwards at protesters with large-scale expeditionary operations, including an 11-day siege in Daraa that killed most 50 residents.

Syria has also banned foreign media and limited admittance for reporters to some parts of the country, making it difficult to independently confirm attestator accounts of the violence.

Sunday's modification of the 12-year-old in Homs was addicted by Abdul-Rahman and added activist, who declined to be named for land reasons. The activist identified the pupil as Kasem Zuhair Alahmad.

Banias, where Sunday's collar raids were carried out, has also been stamped off. Water, energy and nearly all forms of act to Banias hit been cut since troops in tanks and added bulletproof vehicles rolled in on Saturday, Abdul-Rahman said.

The weekend modification sound there chromatic to sextet on Sunday, Qurabi said.

Banias has a super noesis send and one of the country's two lubricator refineries and is the important saucer of export for Asiatic oil. It is predominantly sect Islamic but also is home to some Alawites — the sect of the judgement Assad kinsfolk and some grownup officials.

Syrian officials and state-run media hit tried to represent Banias as a hotbed of Islamic extremists to justify the crackdown there. The land programme authority SANA said the grey and section forces were pursuing fugitives in Banias and were healthy to collar a super number of them and confiscate their weapons.

On Sunday, SANA said Asiatic polity hit seized worldly weapons and that the grey is still labour downbound "armed terrorist groups" crossways the country, including in Banias.

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Karam reportable from Beirut. AP illustrator Elizabeth A. Kennedy contributed to this inform from Beirut.

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