Pro- Assad militia accused of killing frenzy
Army shelled hamlet before entire families were cut down, witnesses say
The voice of Laith al- Hemary’s brother whispered on the mobile phone: “There are shouts and screams coming from outside. They are killing everyone they find.” Then the line went dead. This was the last time that Hemary, 30, spoke to his brother before he was killed inside the family home in the Syrian hamlet of Qubair on Wednesday.
He was among 78 victims who are believed to have died in a frenzied onslaught in this village in a farming district 24 kilometres from the city of Hama. The full horror of the atrocity was betrayed by bloody videos of mutilated children’s bodies and charred corpses.
In a few hours, almost the entire population of Qubair was massacred in what appears to have been one of the bloodiest incidents since the start of the Syrian uprising.
Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad were responsible, according to opposition activists. They said that regular forces were working in tandem with a pro- government militia, known as the Shabiha, recruited largely from Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
The regime’s troops began the attack on Wednesday afternoon with a heavy artillery barrage, said the activists. Then Shabiha militiamen entered the hamlet armed with sticks, guns and knives. They attacked homes and farmhouses, shooting and slaughtering all the inhabitants they could find.
Hemary and his cousin were among only a handful of survivors of the massacre.
“I could see thick smoke rising from Qubair,” he said. “I called my brother constantly on the mobile. He was hiding in our home. He told me cars full of Shabiha had come to the village and were attacking everyone and burning houses.”
At 5.10 p. m., three hours after the attack began, Hemary’s brother’s voice died away and he stopped answering his calls. Pushing open the door of his home several hours later, Hemary found the bloodied bodies of his mother, three sisters and three brothers on the ground.
“They had been beaten on the head by sticks and stabbed with knives,” he said. “I went to other homes. I saw family after family slaughtered by knives.”
Laith al- Hamary told The Associated Press he survived by hiding in an olive grove about 800 metres from the farms as the killings took place. But he said his mother and six siblings, the youngest 10- year- old twins, did not.
“When I came out of hiding and went inside the houses, I saw bodies everywhere. Entire families either shot or killed with sharp sticks and knives,” he said.
After the militia departed and Qubair fell quiet later that evening, people from nearby villages ventured into the stricken hamlet.
“I saw a two- month- old child without a head,” said Abou Hisham alHamouli, who lives in a village two km from Qubair. “I saw the burnt corpse of a woman. Her two children were wrapped around, hugging her. They died like that. There were too many burned bodies.”
Other witnesses reported that the militiamen sang songs in praise of Assad as they killed.
A former soldier who joined the rebel Free Syrian Army said that he reached the village within hours of the massacre, but left quickly because Syrian government troops were still in the area. “I went into houses and saw children without a head, and others without arms. Some were burned and some were without eyes,” he said.
There were only five known survivors, he added. The exact number of victims could not be confirmed, but people from the nearby village of Maerzaf said they had buried 57 corpses. A further 30 bodies were missing and had not yet been buried, said activists.
With almost no foreign reporters in Syria, the accounts of what happened in this remote farming village cannot be independently verified.
The massacre follows an atrocity in the town of Houla in Homs province less than two weeks ago, where witnesses blamed the killing on the same Shabiha militia.