iloubnan - Lebanon students demand Syria's Assad step down - June 10, 2011

Hundreds of students gathered amid tight security in north Lebanon on Friday to demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, an AFP correspondent said.

"Take our blood if you want, but go," chanted around 400 students from the state-run Lebanese University -- including 50 Syrians -- who had gathered in the port city of Tripoli.

Students took to the streets after Friday prayers, chanting: "Your bullets only give our revolution strength" and "God, Syria, freedom."

"We will continue to gather every week in support of the people of Syria, to make sure the world hears their voice," said Syrian student Mohammed al-Asaad, one of the organisers. "We are here legally, under Lebanese law, and aim at holding peaceful rallies that do not break the law," he told AFP.

Riot police were deployed in force as the protesters tried to make their way from Tripoli's Sunni Muslim district of Qobbeh to Jabal Mohsen, an Alawite district, before being blocked by troops. The mainly Sunni city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest after the capital Beirut, is also home to a minority Muslim Alawite community which strongly backs the regime of Assad, himself a Alawite.

Tripoli has for the past few years seen intense clashes between Sunni supporters of Lebanon's pro-Western caretaker prime minister Saad Hariri and Alawites loyal to a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Iran and Syria.

The Syrian government is engaged in a deadly crackdown on protesters who since March have been demanding the end of 48 years of rule by the Assad-controlled Baath party. 

Local authorities in northern Lebanon estimate that at least 5,000 Syrian refugees have crossed the border since April, fleeing the violence.