DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule.
There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.
The voting for Syria's 250-member parliament is unlikely to affect the course of Syria's popular uprising, which began 14 months ago with largely peaceful protests. The regime responded with a violent crackdown, pushing many in the opposition to take up arms.
The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have been killed in Syria's turmoil, which many observers fear is rapidly descending into a civil war.
Voters lined up and dropped white ballots in large, plastic boxes after polls opened at 7 a.m. Election officials say more than 7,000 candidates are competing seats in the legislature in a country of almost 15 million eligible voters out of a population of 24 million.
The opposition has called the elections a farce and says it will accept nothing short of the fall of Assad's regime.
As the voting got under way, regime forces stormed several poor farming villages in central Syria where residents were boycotting the elections, shooting randomly and torching homes, two witnesses said. One resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, Zakariya, said at least four people in his village of Qabr Fidda were killed – including a father and his two daughters, who were burned alive.
"They also shot at people who fled in to the farms but we don't know anything about what happened to them," Zakariya told The Associated Press by telephone from the village, 30 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Hama.
