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Activists say hundreds killed in Syria (VIDEO)

As crackdown gets worse, GlobalPost talks to the activists that started it all.
Hama syria 8 3 2011Enlarge
A makeshift gallows with a poster shows the pictures of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assd (top-C), his sons current President Bashar al-Assad (2nd L and bottom C) and Maher (L), their brother in-law General Assef Shawkat (2nd R) and businessman Rami Makhluf (R), during an anti-regime protest outside the Syrian embassy in the Cypriot capital Nicosia on July 31, 2011. (Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)
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For Syrians living in the city of Hama, it's a recurring nightmare — the sounds of tanks rolling into the city center, and screams.

The worst violence of the Syrian uprising came to Hama over the weekend when government security forces, on orders from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sent tanks into the city to try and quell the revolt, killing scores of protesters. The offensive has not let up and activists in the area now say that more than 100 people have been killed in the last 24 hours.

The new round of violence in Hama came just hours after the United Nations and others around the international community condemned the violence and the Assad regime.

GlobalPost in Damascus: A Syrian soldier tells it like it is

It's not the first time that Hama has witnessed such a slaugher. In 1982, Hafiz al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad's father, ordered the military into the city to violently put down an Islamic uprising, killing more than 25,000 people.

With foreign journalists, and other international observers, barred from entering the country, the only source of information is coming from the growing networks of activists who are inside and outside the country and armed with notebooks and cell phones. A number of shaky, but shocking, videos of the attacks have been passed around and posted to YouTube.

GlobalPost's Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand caught up with several of those activists to find out how they are managing to get the information out, and at what cost.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-casbah/activists-say-hundreds-killed-syria

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