DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces on Tuesday opened fire at a protest at the university of Aleppo, the northern city which until recently been spared anti-regime demonstrations, monitors said.

Security forces confronted some 2,500 students who demonstrated inside the university campus, at the science faculty, in a bid to disperse the gathering, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

It gave no details of any casualities.

Protesters flew a green, white and black flag of "independence" inside the university, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

The Observatory said that security forces brought in buses to transport arrested protesters.

Aleppo, a commercial hub, has been largely spared the violence that rights groups say has killed more than 6,000 people in Syria since it broke out last March.

But tensions have risen there in the wake of the car bombings earlier this month that killed at least 28 people, the first such attacks in Syria's second city since the start of the uprising, which prompted the regime to step up security.

bur-ak/sma