© Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA picture taken by a mobile phone shows anti-government protesters in Banias in northeastern Syria on Friday.
From the Mediterranean coast and Kurdish east to the steppe of the Houran in southern Syria, protesters gathered in at least 20 towns and cities, including the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.
The breadth of the protests - and people's willingness to defy security forces who deployed en masse - painted a tableau of turmoil in one of the Arab world's most repressive countries. In scenes unprecedented only weeks ago, protesters tore down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and toppled statues of his father, Hafez, in two towns on the capital's outskirts, according to witnesses and video footage.
But despite the bloodshed, which promised to unleash another day of unrest as the dead are buried on Saturday, the momentum of the protests seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval that revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia represented. Organizers said the movement was yet in its infancy, and the government, building on 40 years of institutional inertia, still commanded the loyalty of the military, the economic elite and sizable minorities of Christian and heterodox Muslim sects who fear the state's collapse.
Coming a day after Mr. Assad endorsed the lifting of draconian emergency rule, the killings represented another chapter in the government's strategy of promised concession and grim crackdown that has left it staggering but still entrenched.
"There are indications the regime is scared, and this is adding to the momentum, but this is still the beginning," said Wissam Tarif, the executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. "Definitely, we haven't seen the millions we saw in Egypt or Tunisia. The numbers are still humble, and it's a reality we have to acknowledge."
In the capital, a city that underlines the very prestige of the Assad family's four decades of rule, hundreds gathered after prayers at the al-Hassan Mosque. Some of them chanted, "The people want the fall of the government," a slogan made famous in both Egypt and Tunisia. But security forces quickly dispersed the protests with tear gas, witnesses said. Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, appeared to remain relatively quiet.
Larger protests, though, gathered in poorer towns on the capital's outskirts, drawing thousands, and some of the worst bloodshed occurred there. Other demonstrations were reported across Syria, from Qamishli in the east to Azra in the southwest. Organizers said at least some dissent was reported in every Syrian province.
In Baniyas, a banner denounced Mr. Assad and his ruling Baath Party: "No Baath, No Assad, we want to free the country."
Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link in Damascus, basing her account on witnesses, said 80 people were killed - 19 people in Azra, in southern Syria, and one in nearby Dara'a; 15 near Homs, Syria's third-largest city; 40 in the suburbs of Damascus, and one in the city; one in Latakia, a coastal city in the north; and three in Hama, east of Latakia. Mr. Tarif's group said 73 people were killed.
It was impossible to independently verify those numbers. Before Friday, human rights activists reported that at least 200 people had been killed in the weeks of the revolt.
In Homs, where major protests erupted this week, activists said large numbers of security forces and police in plain clothes flooded the city, putting up checkpoints and preventing all but a few dozen from gathering.
Abu Kamel al-Dimashki, an activist in Homs reached by Skype, said that 16 of those who were protesting went missing.
"I tried to go there, but I couldn't," he said. "The secret police are all over Homs."
By afternoon, one resident said streets were deserted, the silence punctuated every 15 minutes or so by gunfire. Another spoke of residents hiding at home.
"We closed the windows and the curtains and hid at home," one woman said via Skype. "The gunfire was so loud and close." "God save us," she added.
One of the most violent clashes occurred in Azra, about 20 miles from Dara'a, a poor town in southwestern Syria that helped unleash the uprising. A protester who gave his name as Abu Ahmad said about 3,000 people had marched toward the town square when they came under fire. He said he brought three of those killed to the mosque - one shot in the head, one in the chest and one in the back - the oldest of whom was 20.
"There is no more fear. No more fear," Abu Ahmad said by telephone. "We either want to die or to remove him. Death has become something ordinary."
Video showed a man carrying the body of a young boy who had been shot.
The protests nearest Damascus were most likely to rattle the country's leaders. Both sides understand the significance of the capital: Mass protests there would serve as a devastating blow to the government's prestige. So far, security forces have managed to block marchers from arriving from the outskirts - a strategy it appears to have adopted in dealing with other cities like Dara'a and Homs, as well.
One protester in Douma described police shooting directly at marchers.
"People were calling for the fall of the government, the end of the Baath Party and freedom," said the protester, who gave his name as Abu Kassem. "I got scared and left."
The clashes followed a security buildup around Damascus and in Homs over the preceding day. Residents of Damascus said police officers were seen heading Thursday from a headquarters on the outskirts in Zabadani toward the capital, where military security officers had reportedly turned out in greater numbers. In Dara'a, security forces set up checkpoints on Friday, and other deployments were reported in suburbs of the capital like Douma, Maidamiah and Dariah.
In Homs, cellphones were hard to reach, and some land lines had been cut.
On Friday, instructions were delivered to protesters from the main Facebook page, urging them to paint revolutionary graffiti, document the protests with pictures and videos, stay peaceful and chant slogans. To a remarkable degree they succeeded: in a country closed to most journalists, the Internet was replete with protesters' account.
The government has maintained that the uprising is led by militant Islamists, and organizers acknowledge that religious forces like the banned Muslim Brotherhood have taken part. The government has also accused foreign countries of supporting the protests. And, indeed, some of the largest have occurred in cities near Syria's borders: Dara'a, near Jordan, and Homs, an industrial center near conservative northern Lebanon.
On Thursday, Mr. Assad signed decrees that repealed harsh emergency rule, in place since 1963, abolished draconian security courts and granted citizens the right to protest peacefully, though they still need government permission to gather. The orders had already been handed down to his government on Tuesday, making his endorsement a formality; its timing seemed aimed in part at blunting Friday's protests.
The reforms are at the heart of a debate taking place in Syria, where many fear the prospect of chaos or score-settling in the event of Mr. Assad's fall. Many activists said the reforms so far were too little and too late; in the words of Haitham Maleh, an oft-imprisoned activist and former judge, "The mentality of the regime has to change."
Not that a small minority ruling over a majority is ever a people pleaser, but it does make you wonder why now? Perhaps we just need another excuse for war in the Middle East to surround our beloved state of Israel and its prophetic fate?
As others have said, it seems with this transition, a few are preparing to step forward even as the vast majority step backwards. A convergence on all fronts.