Lawyers from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, staged a sit-in at the Judicial Palace and delivered a statement denouncing the Assad regime’s campaign of terror in the country. At the same time Aleppo’s students continued their protests which today spread to include several high schools.

One of the protesting lawyers delivered a statement on behalf of the group in the Judicial Palace who called themselves the Free Lawyers. Their statement denounced the continued “daily campaign of random arrests, forced disappearances, and killing that is being practiced against the people of Syria.” The lawyers also paid tribute to their detained colleagues, Salam Othman and Abdelsalam AlAtrash, demanding the regime “reveal their fate.”

Meanwhile, the regime sponsored militias known as shabbiha assaulted several protests throughout Aleppo University‘s campus. Students at Aleppo University staged protests demanding the right to live freely and pledging solidarity with other cities currently under attack by the Syrian Arab Army. The shabbiha responded by assaulting the students and breaking up the protests.

The situation escalated when the students regrouped to continue their protest at the Faculty of Humanities. Armed government forces, reportedly the notorious Air Force Intelligence, arrived on the scene to back up the shabbiha. They used live ammunition
to disperse the protest and then laid siege to the campus trapping all students inside. Activists report that the siege was preventing them from evacuating three students with critical gunshot wounds.

Protests were reported elsewhere in Aleppo. Teenage students from AlKawakbi School protested right after their classes ended. Students from two other schools in Aleppo’s Aazamiya neighborhood joined for a protest there. They were attacked by security forces who opened live gunfire. Student protests were also reported in the privately owned Ebla University.