More Syria deaths as half a million flood Hama

Pro-regime Syrians wave their national flag during a rally in support of "national unity Syrian security forces killed at least 15 people, activists said, as President Bashar al-Asad's regime accused the US envoy of inciting violence in Hama, where nearly half a million people protested .
Opposition activists on Friday reported five deaths in the central city of Homs, two in the capital's commercial neighbourhood Medan and six in the Dmeir area east of Damascus.
Security forces machine-gunned protesters at Maaret al-Numan in the northwest, killing one and wounding five, an activist said.
Soldiers also fired at a family car on the Hama-Aleppo road near Maaret al-Numan, killing a man and wounding his wife and two daughters, the activist added.
In Homs, "at least five people were killed in the Al-Khalidya neighbourhood by security forces who opened fire against demonstrators," said Abdel Karim Rihawi, president of the Syrian League for Human Rights.
"Security forces shot dead two demonstrators in the neighbourhood of Medan in Damascus."
London-based Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said six people were killed in Dmeir and that at least 24 people had been injured in Homs, some gravely.
Abdel Rahman said a record 450,000 Syrians rallied after Friday prayers in Hama, an opposition bastion, under the banner "No to dialogue" with Asad's regime and called for its fall.
Both US envoy Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier visited the city on Thursday.
"The US ambassador met with saboteurs in Hama... who erected checkpoints, cut traffic and prevented citizens from going to work," an interior ministry statement said.
The foreign ministry called Ford's presence in Hama "obvious proof of the implication of the United States in the ongoing events, and of their attempts to increase (tensions), which damage Syria's security and stability."
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she was "dismayed" by such criticism and stressed that Syrian authorities knew of the visit in advance.
The ambassador met "average Syrian citizens" and "certainly did not incite anyone to anything," US embassy press attache JJ Harder told AFP.
Harder also took issue with government claims that armed gangs are the problem in Hama -- where activists say regime forces have killed 25 people since Tuesday -- stressing that Ford "saw no evidence of this."
Dozens of regime supporters demonstrated outside the American embassy in Damascus on Friday to condemn Ford's trip to Hama, an AFP journalist said.
In Paris, foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Chevallier went to Hama "to show France's engagement with the victims, the civilian population."
State news agency SANA said that "tens of thousands of people" marched in Damascus, Aleppo in the north and Deir Ezzor in the east, against foreign intervention and to show their support for Asad's reform programme.
State television, meanwhile, broadcast footage of pro-regime rallies centred on Bab Tuma, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood of the capital's walled Old City.
Washington meanwhile summoned the Syrian ambassador for talks this week after reports that embassy staff had filmed US protests against the crackdown in Syria, the State Department said Friday.
Ambassador Imad Mustapha was called in to meet with top State Department officials "to express a number of our concerns with the reported actions of certain Syrian embassy staff in the United States," the agency said.
"We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under Ambassador Mustapha's authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States."
Before Friday's protests, the Facebook group Syrian Revolution 2011 had urged "No to dialogue: What dialogue (is possible) when blood has been spilled, while the towns are besieged? The people want the fall of the regime."
Rights groups say that more than 1,300 civilians have been killed and 10,000 people arrested by security forces since mid-March when the anti-government protests erupted.
The EU's top diplomat Catherine Ashton on Friday slammed the crackdown saying it discredited Asad's regime and called for "genuine national dialogue."