Increasing the impression that the hawks were in the ascendancy, members of the notorious Shabiha gang, which is linked to members of the Assad family, were deployed on the streets of Tartus and in a suburb of Damascus. Residents said the gangsters, armed with sticks and hunting rifles, had beaten suspected opposition sympathisers. The day before Shabiha gunmen were accused of firing at protesters and passersby from cars and city rooftops in the coastal city of Latakia, where at least 16 civilians were killed.