Thousands of mourners in the village of Tafas, just north of the southern Syrian town of Daraa, burned the local Baath Party headquarters and a police station on Saturday during the funeral of a protester killed a day earlier, residents said.

The mourners, chanting ‘No more fear!’ and calling for freedom, were marching in the funeral procession of Kamal Baradan, a protester killed on Friday in Daraa.

Yesterday the statue of former president Hafez Assad , father of current president Bashar was destroyed in Daraa

The violence in Daraa, a city of about 300,000 near the border with Jordan, was fast becoming a major challenge for President Bashar Assad, who tried to contain the situation by freeing detainees and promising to fire officials responsible for the violence.