Entire Syrian cabinet resigns in latest bid to appease protesters

Mr Assad, whose family has controlled Syria for four decades, is trying to calm the growing dissent with a string of concessions. He is expected to address the nation in the next 24 hours to lift emergency laws in place since 1963 and moving to annul other harsh restrictions on civil liberties and political freedoms.

More than 60 people have died since March 18 as security forces cracked down on protesters, Human Rights Watch said.

State TV said Mr Assad accepted the resignation of the 32-member cabinet headed by Naji al-Otari, who has been in place since September 23. The cabinet will continue running the country’s affairs until the formation of a new government.

The resignations will not affect Mr Assad, who holds the most power in the authoritarian regime.

The announcement came hours after hundreds of thousands of supporters of Syria’s hard-line regime poured into the streets as the government tried to show it has mass support.

Protests that began on March 18 and ensuing violence have brought sectarian tensions in Syria out in the open for the first time in decades, a taboo topic because the country has a Sunni majority ruled by minority Alawites, a branch of Shiite Islam. Mr Assad has placed his fellow Alawites into most positions of power in Syria.

But he also has used increased economic freedom and prosperity to win the allegiance of the prosperous Sunni Muslim merchant classes, while punishing dissenters with arrest, imprisonment and physical abuse.

The government-sanctioned rallies dubbed “loyalty to the nation march” brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Hasakeh in the north and the central cities of Hama and Homs. Schoolchildren were given the day off and bank employees and other workers were given two hours off to attend the demonstrations.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s chaos deepened when munitions factory looters set off an accidental explosion that killed at least 78 in an area seized by Islamist militants.

The seizure of the factory and nearby towns amplified Western fears that the fragile Yemeni state could deteriorate quickly because of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s stand-off with an opposition coalition of youth groups, military defectors, clerics and tribal leaders calling for his ousting.

Mr Saleh has co-operated closely with the US in the battle against Yemen’s branch of al-Qaida, which has used areas of Yemen long out of state control to launch attacks.