By Mohamed Misto & Ammar al-Ali
DARAA, Syria
Five years ago, Syria’s southwestern city of Daraa saw the first street protests demanding an end to the rule of Bashar al-Assad.
In March 2011, demonstrators took to the streets of Daraa to protest the arrest and torture by regime forces of teenagers who sprayed anti-Assad graffiti.
The demonstrations later spread across the country, which prompted the Assad regime to use brutal force to quell the protests.
“The first spark of the Syrian revolution came out from the al-Arbaeen school in Daraa after a number of students were detained for spraying anti-regime graffiti,” Abu Ali Mahamid, a member of the so-called Shura Council of Daraa, told Anadolu Agency on Monday.
The opposition leader recalled that regime forces have rejected repeated calls by local residents to release the students.
On March 18, 2011, thousands of protesters set out from the historic Omari Mosque in the city to protest abuses by regime forces and demand the release of students. Mahamid said pro-Assad forces threatened to open fire on the protesters in an effort to disperse the mass rallies.
“As demonstrators did not heed their calls, security forces opened fire on the protesters, killing two people, who were the first two martyrs of the Syrian revolution,” he said.
Five years after the revolution, almost all of Daraa’s landmarks have been destroyed, including the Omari Mosque, whose minaret was brought down by regime shelling in 2013.
Since March 2011, the Syrian opposition has been calling for ending the four-decade rule of the Assad dynasty in Syria. The Assad regime, however, cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity, pushing the Arab country into a vicious civil war.
According to a tally compiled by Anadolu Agency, more than 361,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict erupted in 2011.
