There is trouble in another country in the Middle East. Since January, people in Syria have been protesting against their president, Bashar al-Assad. They want him to step down. They want democracy and a better life for themselves.

The leader is fighting back. Last Monday al-Assad sent thousands of troops to a city called Daraa, in Syria, to stop the people from protesting. His army set up in the centre of the southern city and placed people with rifles, called snipers, on rooftops to shoot anyone they thought was against the president. al-Assad took this step after some politicians in the area quit their jobs to show they were not happy with the president’s leadership.

Recently, there have been many “mass protests,” particularly in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

A mass protest is when many people (often hundreds of thousands) gather in a city to show their government that they don’t like it, or that they don’t agree with something it is doing.

In Tunisia protests began last December, to force the country’s president to leave. The people were upset because they had no jobs, food was too expensive and many people in the government could not be trusted. The protest worked and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family were forced to leave Tunisia. They are accused of having stolen money and property.