Streets in the city, which has witnessed deadly gunfire in one week of demonstrations demanding the end of the ruling regime, were empty and all shops and schools closed Thursday as thousands of soldiers and anti-terrorism units patrolled the streets.[break]
Entrances to the city remaind sealed off, and vehicles granted access by a military checkpoint had to pass through two separate intelligence checkpoints manned by armed plain-clothes forces.
Rights activists have said at least 100 people were killed by gunfire on Wednesday alone in the city, a tribal area at Syria´s border with Jordan.
Buthaina Shaaban, media advisor to President Bashar al-Assad, on Thursday put the death toll in Daraa at 10.
Syria, which is still under a 1963 emergency law banning demonstrations, is the latest state in the Middle East to witness an uprising against a long-running autocratic regime.
Budding protests against the regime of Assad, whose Baath party has ruled Syria for 40 years, have surfaced but been contained in the capital Damascus, with Daraa emerging as the hub of the movement.
The protesters, who have not yet clearly been identified, for one week had been holed up in Daraa´s Omari mosque.
Authorities in Daraa accuse the protesters of being Salafists, an austere branch of Sunni Islam.
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