'We want the men of Baida' chant hundreds in coastal highway protest at mass arrests, as others demonstrate in city of Banias

Hundreds of Syrian women have marched along the country's main coastal highway to demand the release of men seized from their home town of Baida, human rights activists said.

Security forces, including secret police, stormed Baida, going into houses and arresting hundreds of men, after local people joined anti-government protests, according to the activists.

Video showed a large crowd, mostly women, marching along the road leading to Turkey and chanting: "We want the men of Baida." Witnesses told AP the crowd also chanted: "We will not be humiliated."

Women also demonstrated in the nearby Mediterranean city of Banias, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said 350 men had been arrested in Baida. An activist on Twitter put the number at 800 and said she would release the names of 111 of those detained soon.

In an apparent attempt to calm the women's demonstration, authorities released about 100 of the detainees and brought them to the area where the protesters had gathered, according to a witness, who said the crowd reacted with cheers but intended to continue with their protest until all of the men were released.

Demonstrations have also been held at Damascus University in the capital and Aleppo University, according to activists. Video was posted purporting to show the protest in Aleppo, which would be significant if confirmed, as Syria's second-biggest city had been quiet since the demonstrations against 48 years of autocratic Ba'ath party rule began.

A human rights lawyer in contact with people in Baida told Reuters that security forces had arrested 200 residents in the town, killing two people. "They brought in a television crew and forced the men they arrested to shout 'We sacrifice our blood and our soul for you, Bashar [President Bashar al-Assad]'," the lawyer said. "Syria is the Arab police state par excellence. But the regime still watches international reaction and, as soon as it senses that it has weakened, it turns more bloody."

Tensions have been raised in the mostly Sunni Muslim country ruled by minority Alawites – an offshoot sect of Shia Islam – since protests against the president began.

The Damascus Declaration, Syria's main rights group, says the death toll from the demonstrations, now in their fourth week, has reached 200. Assad has responded to the demonstrations with a combination of some concessions – offered to conservative Muslims and Kurds – and force.

Assad's government has described the protests as part of a foreign conspiracy to sow sectarian strife, blaming unspecified armed groups and "infiltrators" for the violence, and denying a report by Human Rights Watch that security forces have prevented ambulances and medical supplies from reaching besieged areas.

Montaha al-Atrash, board member of the Syrian human rights group Sawasieh, said: "As soon as an area like Baida stands up, they attack it and put out the usual film reel of members of the security forces who died defending stability and order."

State-run television aired purported confessions by three members of a "terrorist cell", saying they received money and weapons from a Lebanese lawmaker to instigate protests in Syria and create chaos across the country.

Activists said Baida was targeted because residents participated in a demonstration in Banias last week in which protesters shouted "the people want the overthrow of the regime" – the rallying cry of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions where the leaders were toppled.

One activist said some residents of Baida had weapons and it appeared that an armed confrontation erupted. But Sheikh Anas Airout, an imam in Banias, said Baida residents were largely unarmed.

The protests first erupted in the southern city of Deraa near the border with Jordan and expanded to the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, the northeast, the coast and areas in between.