In its wake, residents stepped out of their houses for the first time, most of them mute with fear.

Further testimony to the intensity of the military incursion litters the streets.

Spent bullet casings, broken glass, tank tracks imprinted onto the road, burned tyres and blackened walls now abound in this southern town, seat of the seven-week-old revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"We didn't dare venture outside. I saw a sniper on a roof and a bullet passed within inches of me. Thank God, my life was saved," Najah Abdallah, a young mother wearing a black headscarf and holding her son by the hand, told AFP.

Some grocers had opened for business and bakers were selling bread again, while a handful of customers sipped their coffee on the pavement as cars queued outside the petrol station.

Frightened by the presence of cameras and reporters supervised by security officers, one man timidly offered his view: "Hopefully, everything is normal."

Suddenly, another man closer to the protesters joined in: "How can you say nothing is happening? Lies. Me, I'm not afraid to speak out. They just came to massacre us. They ransacked my house, stole my money."

"I was living overseas and what did I see? Death and destruction," he yelled.

Security forces accompanying reporters got uncomfortable and immediately qualified him as "a Salafist nutcase". The regime regularly accuses its opponents of being Muslim extremists.

Others, however, recount the official version of events.

"It was terror. There were hooded men with guns. They set up roadblocks and were taking passers-by off the streets. It was like a state within a state but we've been set free," said Abu Mohammed, a shopkeeper.

"Ten thousand people took part in the protests in Daraa to demand the governor's ouster, but outsiders infiltrated the crowd," he said.

But when a cameraman approached him for an interview, he refused, petrified: "If I talk to you, I won't be able to sleep at my own home."

Ali al-Akrad, an elderly man wearing a traditional galabiya robe for men, lamented the devastation at the courthouse where he worked for 40 years.

"For 20 days I was holed up at home. Now I step outside and find this. What a mess," he said.

The military on Thursday withdrew its troops from the town "having achieved its mission," said General Riad Haddad, the army's political director.

"We did not confront the protesters. We only chased the terrorist gangs who had hidden in several places. We never used heavy weapons except automatic rifles," he said, adding his troops had arrested 150 snipers.

Twenty-five soldiers were killed and 177 injured during the siege of Daraa, which began on April 25, Haddad said.

Human rights groups, however, say that close to 300 people were killed in and around the town since the start of the uprising and that nearly 5,000 were arrested.

The onlooking security forces became tense as they approached Al-Omari mosque, which was the epicentre of the protests. People outside eyed them up and down with suspicion and hostility.

On nearby walls, slogans could still be read: "The revolutionaries of Daraa" and "The people want to topple the regime".

"It will take at least until Sunday for the fear to subside," said Daraa's new governor, Mohammad Khaled al-Hannus. Asked about possible demonstrations in the town on the "Day of Defiance" called for Friday, he replied: "No problem, so long as they have permission and are not armed."

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