Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Syria on Friday, aims to demonstrate the power of their movement to the Arab League monitors check whether Assad carries out a promise to halt his crackdown on armed riot.
United Kingdom-based Syria Observatory for human rights said security forces have shot dead 27 people on Friday in an area where there are no observers, adding the toll the conflicts that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 people, most of them unarmed civilians.
With a little trust in the Arab observer mission, the opposition groups trying to make a coherent movement to enhance their credibility in the eyes of other countries fear chaos if Assad was forced out. The leading opposition group in exile, the National Council of Syria (SNC), signed an agreement on Friday with most of the Syria-based National Committee for coordination, according to Moulhem Droubi, a member of the SNC from Muslim Syria.
The two groups have received attention from Western powers, although it is unclear how much power they held with a mass of protesters.