Assad’s massacre of the innocents that may lead to UN intervention in Syria
Up to 50 children slaughtered by thugs loyal to President’s murderous regime Amid claims they were stabbed, Hague heads demands for emergency UN summit The MOS knows many readers will find this picture deeply shocking . . . but we print it to illustrate
ON A bedroom floor, the bodies of Syrian children lie like discarded dolls. The eyes of some are still open and, hauntingly, their expressions are frozen in fright.
No older than eight, a blood-soaked girl wearing a headscarf and pink diamante belt, is face to face with a younger boy.
Around them, a dozen others, some with their arms outstretched, lie shoulder to shoulder.
All were massacred on Friday, claim activists, when thugs loyal to President Bashar Assad swept through towns and villages in the country’s central province of Homs. Men are said to have been killed on the streets, while women and children were shot and stabbed in their homes.
The images, almost impossible to bear, came from film taken by an amateur and posted online.
In the background the voice of an adult can be heard crying: ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’
Activists say more than 100 people were killed in the attacks, of which around 50 were said to be children – many of them aged under ten.
Other amateur videos posted online showed dead children covered with sheets and blankets. In one, at least a dozen children, some with holes in their heads and faces, lay on what appeared to be the floor of a mosque.
‘They killed entire families, from parents on down to children, but they focused on the children,’ claimed one activist. He added that residents, fearing further attacks, spent yesterday fleeing the area.
Worst hit was Houla, north-west of the city of Homs, the main city of Homs province.
It was peppered with mortars in one of the bloodiest single events in Syria’s 15-month-old uprising.
Activists from the region said regime forces attacked Houla following a
‘This demands a strong international response’
large anti-regime protest on Friday. After the bombardment, pro-government thugs known as shabiha raided the area with appalling ferocity. Syria’s opposition also accused security forces of killing 47 women and children in the besieged city of Homs.
Hadi Abdallah, a Syrian activist, said the bodies of 26 children and 21 women, some with their throats slit and others bearing stab wounds, were found in the Karm el-Zaytoun and Al-Adawiyeh neighbourhoods.
‘Some of the children had been hit with blunt objects on their head, one little girl was mutilated and some women were raped before being killed,’ he said.
Last night Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain is to push for a ‘strong international response’ to the Houla massacre, which he described as ‘appalling’.
Mr Hague said the UK will press for an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council to co-ordinate the response to the crime.
‘There are credible and horrific reports that a large number of civilians have been massacred at the hands of Syrian forces in the town of Houla, including children,’ he said.
Mr Hague urged President Assad’s regime to grant ‘full and immediate’ access to Houla for UN monitors and to stop all military operations, as demanded by UN special envoy Kofi Annan. France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius and the Arab League also condemned the assault.
The attack on Houla left one of the highest death tolls in one specific area since an internationally brokered ceasefire came into effect last month.
In one incident, according to reports, a family of six was killed when their home received a direct hit.
The activists said the Houla killings appeared to be sectarian, raising fears that Syria’s uprising, which started in March 2011 with protests calling for political reform, is edging closer to the type of sectarian war that tore apart its eastern neighbour, Iraq.
The Houla villages are Sunni Muslim. Activists said that the pro-regime forces all came from an arc of villages south of Houla that are populated by Alawites, members of the offshoot of Shia Islam to which Assad belongs.
‘Our area is Sunni and the surrounding villages are Alawite,’ said one activist, Abu Walid. ‘I don’t like to talk about sectarianism, but it was clear that this was sectarian hatred.’
Syrian state TV blamed the ‘massacre’ in Houla on ‘armed terrorist groups’ – a term that it often uses for the opposition.
The claims and videos could not be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from operating inside the country.
Anti-regime groups, which have expressed frustrations with the international community’s reluctance to intervene in Syria’s conflict, strongly condemned the killings.
World powers have fallen behind the UN peace plan, which is supposed to lead to dialogue between all sides on a political solution. The US and European nations say they will not intervene militarily. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya have said they will arm Syria’s rebels, although no country is known to be doing so now.
A spokesman for the opposition Syrian National Council called on the UN Security Council ‘to examine the situation in Houla and to determine the responsibility of the United Nations in the face of such mass killings, expulsions and forced migration from entire neighbourhoods’.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released an unusually harsh statement, saying Arab nations and the international community were ‘partners’ in the killing ‘because of their silence about the massacres that the Syrian regime has committed’.
The UN has sent more then 250 military observers to Syria to try to salvage the ceasefire, and a spokesman for the team said they visited Houla yesterday. The observers said they counted at least 90 bodies, including 32 children. UN mission head MajorGeneral Robert Mood said that the killing in the town was ‘indiscriminate and unforgivable’.
But one Houla activist said the observers’ visit would not help and could cause the government to attack again. ‘As soon as they came we asked them to leave because many areas they go to get attacked,’ said Abu Suleiman. ‘We don’t want them to get near us.’
A local activist, Abu Yazan, said the massacre began with shelling and, later, pro-regime thugs stormed the
village, raiding homes and shooting at civilians. It followed an antiregime demonstration after prayers on Friday.
Homs has been among the hardest hit provinces in a government crackdown since the uprising against Assad’s regime began in March last year. The United Nations said several weeks ago that 9,000 people had been killed in Syria. Hundreds more have died since.
The new violence in Houla is also a further blow to a UN peace plan for
‘Terrorist groups were behind bomb blasts’
Syria that was supposed to start with the ceasefire between government troops and rebels on April 12 but has never really taken hold.
Despite the daily ceasefire violations, UN secretary general Ban Kimoon said that there was no ‘plan B’ for the Annan initiative.
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Security Council, he said the Syrian opposition controlled ‘significant parts of some cities’.
He said that ‘established terrorist groups’ could have been behind some of the recent bomb blasts in Syria judging from the sophistication of the attacks. He warned that the situation remained ‘extremely serious’ and urged states not to arm either side in the conflict.
Earlier this month, a bombing in Damascus left 55 dead in an attack which the government blamed on Al Qaeda. The attack came amid mounting fears that the terrorist group was taking advantage of the conflict to gain a foothold.
Mr Ban said Syria ‘has not ceased the use of, or pulled back, their heavy weapons in many areas’ – one of the requirements of the peace plan. Mr Annan’s six-point peace agreement ordered a cessation of violence on April 12. While casualties appeared to fall after the truce, the fighting quickly resumed to previous levels.
The northern city of Aleppo, a major economic hub, has remained largely supportive of Assad throughout the uprising but anti-regime sentiment has been on the rise in recent weeks.
On Friday Syrian forces fired tear gas and live ammunition to disperse thousands of protesters in Aleppo calling for Assad to be ousted, killing five people, activists said.
LAST Friday, in the bloodiest single event in Syria’s 15-month uprising, more than 100 people were massacred in the province of Homs, at least 50 of them said to be children. Videos posted on the internet show the tiny bloodstained bodies laid, shoulder to shoulder, on the floor of a bombed-out building.
Hours earlier, General Mofwaq Joumaa, president of the Syrian National Olympic Committee, claimed the British had the ‘wrong impression’ of Syria. According to Joumaa, it is a ‘peaceful country’, one that enjoys security and safety, and there is no reason to ban him from the Games.
Ministers are still assessing the visa applications of the 31 Syrian athletes and officials scheduled to attend.
Sportsmen and women should not be punished for the abuses of a political regime, but the same cannot be said of its lieutenants. Their presence at the July event would, at best, signal our indifference to the slaughter in which 10,000 people have died so far. At worst, it could suggest we condone the unconscionable escalation in violence that has sickened the world.
William Hague has said the UK will push for a ‘strong international response’ to the massacre. We must begin that process by refusing to allow Joumaa on British soil.