Tens of thousands rally in Syria

Syrian troops fired live ammunition and tear gas on tens of thousands of protesters calling for the regime's ouster in several cities around the country Friday, killing at least one demonstrator, activists said

The protests, which have become a weekly ritual following Friday prayers, came hours after a bomb blast struck a major oil pipeline in western Syria, causing oil to spill into a nearby lake. State television said the explosion was a "terrorist" attack by a group of "saboteurs."
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops on Friday opened fire in the Mediterranean town of Latakia, killing at least one protester there.
The Local Coordination Committees, which also tracks anti-government protests, confirmed the death, and said another person was killed in a shooting by security forces in the southern city of Daraa.
Troops beat up protesters in the northwestern coastal town of Banias and fired tear gas in several other locations. There were also marches in the countryside around Damascus despite an intense crackdown there in the past few days.
Opposition groups have dubbed Friday's protests "Your silence is killing us," in an attempt to mobilize sections of the population that have not yet joined the protests and Arab leaders who remain silent about the crackdown in Syria.
Syrian authorities have unleashed a brutal crackdown in an effort to crush the revolt against President Bashar Assad, and activists say more than 1,600 civilians have died since the protests erupted in mid-March. The government blames the unrest on terrorists and foreign extremists, not true reform-seekers.
The pipeline blast was the second incident involving an oil pipeline in a month, and the second time this week that authorities accused saboteurs of striking installations.
The pipeline carries crude from the oil fields in the oil-rich eastern Deir el-Zour to a refinery in Banias, which is the main point of export for Syrian oil. The country's other refinery is in the central city of Homs.
State TV said the blast hit near the western town of Talkalakh between Homs and Tartous, near the Tal Hosh dam, and left a 33 feet (10 meter) deep crater. The TV said the "terrorist attack sought to cause oil to leak into the dam's waters in order to damage agricultural crops in the area."
Oil Minister Sifian Allaw said 1,500 barrels of crude oil leaked from the struck pipeline into the water behind the dam. He told The Associated Press that the pumping of oil was transferred to another pipeline without interruption in the flow.
The oil that gushed into the dam's waters caused a large spill, turning parts of the surface to black.
Numeir Makhlouf, chairman of the state-owned Syrian Company for Oil Transport, told state-run SANA news agency that the oil had leaked into a main lake that supplies the vast agricultural western area with irrigation water.
Homs governor Ghassan Abdel Al called the explosion a "first-class terrorist" act.