Syria says rebels killed 123 people in north
Islamist group posts footage of bodies • Rebels, Kurds battle near Turkish border
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian state media accused insurgents on Saturday of killing 123 people, the majority of them civilians, during a rebel offensive last week to take the northern town of Khan al-Assad.
State news agency SANA said that armed terrorist groups committed a “massacre... mutilating the bodies of the martyrs and throwing them in a big hole on the outskirts of the town, in addition to incinerating a number of [their] bodies.”
The accusations come a day after a rebel group, calling itself the Supporters of the Islamic Caliphate, posted a video on YouTube of around 30 bodies of young men piled up against a wall whom they said were pro-Assad militiamen.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad monitoring group, cited activists on Friday in Khan alAssal who said that more than 150 soldiers were killed on Monday and Tuesday in and around the town, including 51 soldiers and officers who were executed.
Having won Western support in the early stages of the revolt, the opposition has since succumbed to infighting between moderate and hardline Islamist groups. Meanwhile, President Bashar Assad has been able to rely on Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group to support his crackdown.
Islamists fought with ethnically Kurdish units on Saturday near the border with Turkey in part of an ongoing territorial dispute.
An official in Turkey said there were reports that the alQaida-linked Nusra Front had approached the border and that shelling from Syria had fallen on Turkey. It was not clear who controlled the nearby border crossing of Ras al-Ain, he said.
The army continues to hit major cities with artillery and air strikes. The Observatory reported on Saturday that 29 civilians, including 19 children and four women, died when a surface-to-surface missile hit a building in the northern city of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub.
Insurgents have focused on taking isolated army outposts, mostly in rural areas while forces loyal to Assad have made gains in recent months around Damascus and the central city of Homs.