Syrian forces killed at least 19 protesters

Syrian security forces killed at least 19 people and wounded 35 others on Friday as hundreds of thousands of turned out for anti-regime protests, activists said.

"Nineteen martyrs fell on Friday," the National Organisation for Human Rights told AFP in Nicosia.

"The Syrian authorities had decided to go ahead and kill protesters during the day marked by demonstrations dubbed 'Your silence is killing us'," it said in a statement on Saturday.

The toll included one person killed in Damascus and seven in the region around the capital, including five in Kiswah and two in Douma, said Ammar Qorabi, who heads the human rights group.

Another three were killed in the flashpoint southern town of Daraa, three more died in the eastern city Deir Ezzor, two others in the nearby town of Bukamal, and one in the western coastal city of Latakia.

One person was killed in a village in the central governorate of Homs and another in the flashpoint city of Hama, also in central Syria.

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 12 civilians were killed and 35 were wounded on Friday.

"A young man was killed at one of the security barricades in the Qadam neighbourhood of Damascus," said the Observatory, a British-based human rights group.

Of these, one was killed in Latakia, one in Daraa, one in a village of Homs governorate, and another in Deir Ezzor, while around Damascus, one was killed in Douma, one in Bukamal and four in Kiswah.

Since the protest movement emerged in March, 1,888 people have been killed, 1,519 of them civilians and 369 members of the security forces, according to the Observatory.

In addition, more than 12,000 people have been arrested and thousands more have fled, according to non-governmental groups.