Syrian tanks return to Hama city

As the sun was rising on the last day before Ramadan, the moment Hama's residents had feared finally arrived. Through the barren landscape came the ominous rumble of tanks, heading towards the city from four directions as they bore down on the piles of tyres and bricks that locals had laid out across the main roads as makeshift checkpoints.
"They started shooting with heavy machines guns at civilians, at the young men protecting the barricades," said Omar Halabi, an activist in the city, speaking by Skype. "People started to scream, to say Allahu Akbar and wake each other up. They started to come down into the streets." Few of Hama's residents believed they would get away with protesting in their thousands against the regime of Bashar al-Assad indefinitely, and on the eve of Ramadan, when protests are expected to intensify, the regime clearly decided it had had enough.
The regime's security forces had withdrawn from the city after the weekend of 3 June after shooting more than 70 residents dead after Friday prayers. Since then thousands have poured into al-Aasi square, just steps from the Orontes river which divides the city of some 800,000 into east and west. They have carried olive branches and pink roses calling for the toppling of the regime, repeating chants called out from a central podium and eating food and drink given out by volunteers.