Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, has formed a new cabinet
two weeks after sacking the country’s government amid unprecedented protests
against his rule.

Assad has also issued a decree to release all prisoners
except those with crime-related records.

Women demonstrate on the Baida coastal highway April 13, 2011. Hundreds of women from a Syrian town that has witnessed mass arrests of its men marched along Syria’s main coastal highway on Wednesday to demand their release, human rights activists said. Security forces, including secret police, stormed Baida on Tuesday, going into houses and arresting men aged up to 60, the activists said, after townsfolk joined unprecedented protests challenging the 11-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad. REUTERS/Handout

Adel Safar, a former agriculture minister, will lead the new
government while veteran diplomat Walid al-Moualem remains as foreign minister,
Syria’s state news agency reported.

The announcement follows a deal allowing Syria’s army to
enter the restive coastal city of Baniyas and claims by human rights groups
that several people detained by security forces had been tortured.

“There was a deal on Wednesday between Syrian officials
and city residents for the army to enter Baniyas imminently to restore
order,” Rami Abdel Rahman, president of Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights (SOHR), told AFP by telephone.

“Security agents will refrain from patroling
neighborhoods to make arrests, and the hundreds of people arrested in Banyias
will be released,” he added.

“Elements of armed gangs,” some of whom he said
were close to security and intelligence services and “have caused unrest
in order to create dissension, will be prosecuted,” he said.

Celebratory scenes

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin spoke to an eyewitness where he
described a celebratory scene as the Syrian army entered Baniyas.

“People were chanting the people and the army are one,
they were throwing rice at them, they were welcoming and celebrating their
arrival. The scene there is of a calming tension not escalation, “she
said.

She also added that “The residents of the town have
been fearing these gunmen, four residents have been killed, one soldier killed
today and another one injured.

“According to the government two days ago nine soldiers
were gunned down. So it is a highly volatile situation that the government is
trying to contain and it seems like the Baniyas people are cooperating and
engaging the government’s efforts.”

Security forces had encircled Baniyas, 280 kms northwest of
Damascus, since deadly clashes there on Sunday. Government forces killed at
least four people and wounded 17 when they strafed a residential area of the
town with gunfire for hours, witnesses said.

Nine soldiers were 
killed when their patrol was ambushed outside the town, the official
SANA news agency said.

Scores of people were also wounded in the unrest and
hundreds reportedly arrested in Baniyas and the nearby village of Baida.

Assad on Thursday appealed for calm in a meeting with a
delegation from the city of Daraa, which has been a focal point for
anti-government protests.

Our correspondent said: “We spoke to members of the
delegation that met with the Syrian president, and they said that the meeting went
well. But they won’t elaborate on whether a deal has been reached. It seems
like there are some fine details that need to be worked out.”

Amin said the protesters had told the president to give them
a deadline for when their demands will be met.

“Some of their demands are specific to Daraa and others
are to do with the rest of Syria [such as] more political freedom, the right to
have peaceful protests and the release of all the prisoners that have been
detained in the past three months.

“What the government wants is an end to the protests,
and even if it acknowledges their right to protest it should be done
peacefully. The government wants to put a stop to vandalism and attacks to
public property.

“It seems from the people in Daraa that the government
is seriously trying to contain [the situation in] Daraa because that is where
it all started. If they mange to calm the situation in Daraa, the government
believes it will be able to contain the situation throughout Syria.”

But Syrian students have demonstrated in the country’s
second-largest city of Aleppo in the first protests there since the pro-reform
demonstrations broke out in mid-March, an activist has said.

Radif Mustafa, the president of the Kurdish Committee for
Human Rights, said security forces and students clashed on the campus of
Aleppo’s faculty of literature.

“Security forces dispersed by force a protest by
students calling for freedom,” he told the AFP news agency by telephone.

At least three students were reported to have been arrested.

Most of the demonstrators were said to have come from Daraa.

In Damascus, about 50 students staged a protest at the law
faculty demanding greater freedoms, Abdel Karim Rihawi of the Syrian League for
the Defense of Human Rights said, two days after a sit-in at the science
faculty.

“Security forces used batons to disperse the students
and some students have been arrested,” said Rihawi.

Earlier on Wednesday, hundreds of women marched along
Syria’s main coastal highway to demand the release of men arrested in a mass
raid on the town of Baida.

The women gathered on the road leading to Turkey, chanting
slogans demanding the release of some 350 men arrested on Tuesday by security
forces including secret police.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that security
forces barged into houses and arrested men aged up to 60 after townsfolk had
earlier participated in unprecedented protests challenging Assad’s rule.

“The women of Baida are on the highway. They want their
men back,” the organization said.

A human rights lawyer earlier said security forces had
arrested 200 residents in Baida, killing two people.

“They brought in a television crew and forced the men
they arrested to shout ‘We sacrifice our blood and our soul for you, Bashar’
while filming them,” the lawyer, who was in contact with residents of the
town, told the Reuters news agency.

‘Police state’

“Syria is the Arab police state par excellence. But the
regime still watches international reaction, and as soon as it senses that it
has weakened, it turns more bloody,” said the lawyer, who did not want to
be further identified.

Assad has responded to the protests, now in their fourth
week, with a blend of force and vague promises of reform.

The Damascus Declaration, Syria’s main rights group, said
the death toll from the pro-democracy protests had reached 200.

The authorities have described the protests as part of a
foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife, blaming unspecified armed groups
and “infiltrators” for the violence, and denying a report by Human
Rights Watch that security forces have prevented ambulances and medical
supplies from reaching besieged areas.

Montaha al-Atrash, board member of the Syrian human rights
group Sawasieh, said the authorities “dream up more fantasy armed gang
scenarios as soon as another region rises up to demand freedom and
democracy.”

“Shame on them. They are doing a disservice to their
own president. Why do infiltrators and armed groups disappear when the
authorities organize a ‘popular’ pro-Assad demonstration?” Atrash said.

“As soon as an area like Baida stands up, they attack
it and put out the usual film reel of members of the security forces who died
defending stability and order,” Atrash said.

Activists said Baida was targeted because its residents
participated in a demonstration in Baniyas last week in which protesters
shouted: “The people want the overthrow of the regime” — the rallying
cry of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions where the leaders were toppled.