Syrian government troops again kill some 30 people

 An Arab delegation spoke Wednesday with president Assad. Delegates included the foreign ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Oman and Sudan, in addition to Nabil al-Arabi, the head of the Arab League and was led by the Prime Minisytrer of Qatar, Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani.It is not known whether anything was achieved during the talks.

Syrian security forces opened fire Friday on protesters and hunted them down in house-to-house raids, killing about 30 people in the deadliest day in weeks in the country's 7-month-old uprising, activists said, according to AP.

Much of the bloodshed Friday happened after the protests had ended and security forces armed with machine guns chased protesters and activists, according to opposition groups monitoring the demonstrations. Authorities disrupted telephone and Internet service, they said.

The Syrian opposition's two main activist groups, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordinating Committees, gave figures for the protesters killed on Friday ranging from 29 to 37. Earlier this week, on Wednesday, some 15 peoplewere killed.
Most of the victims fell in the cities Hama and Homs, which both have been at the front line of the pro-democracy protests against the government of Bashar al-Assad that have rocked Syria since mid-March.

Security forces forces encircled mosques before and after Friday prayers and made arrests, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said. UN estimates more than 3,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the violence.
A mass demonstration took also place in Kafr Nabl, a town in Idlib, near the Turkish border, demanding the imposition of a no-fly zone. That call was echoed in Homs, the focus of military raids in recent weeks. Large protests were reported in Deir Balaa and Hama, where clashes took place between suspected army defectors and members of the regular army and the security forces. Troops also raided the northwestern town of Kafruma, arresting 13 people.In Maaret al-Numan, also in Idlib, the funeral of a soldier who defected and was shot dead on Thursday by security forces turned into a rally demanding the fall of Assad's regime, and demonstrators further east in Deir ez-Zor also came under fire as they streamed out of mosques, activists said.