Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Syria yesterday flatly rejected UN charges of crimes against humanity, even as monitors said troops killed dozens of civilians in the heaviest shelling of the protest city of Homs for days.
Navi Pillay, the top human rights representative at the UN, said the world body’s inaction had "emboldened" Syria’s government to unleash overwhelming force against its own civilians.
"The nature and scale of abuses committed by Syrian forces indicate that crimes against humanity are likely to have been committed since March 2011," she told the general assembly.
Syria’s government rejected her accusations. "The foreign ministry, in a message sent to the UN Human Rights Commission, categorically rejected the new allegations made by the commission," state news agency Sana said.
The ministry also acc-used the commission of being manipulated by "countries targeting Syria and of ignoring the terrorist crimes committed by armed groups".
A monitoring group said president Bashar al-Assad’s forces launched one of their heaviest assaults on the central city of Homs since they began their campaign to crush rebels on Feb 4.
On the same day, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Syria for the second time in four months.
Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao said his country "will absolutely not protect any party, including the government in Syria".
The Syrian regime’s crackdown has centred on Homs, which has been under a relentless barrage of machinegun fire, shells, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades for 11 days.
"The shelling of the Baba Amr neighbourhood began at dawn and is the most intense in five days," Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"Two rockets are falling a minute on average," the head of the Britain-based monitoring group said.
A video uploaded to YouTube by activists showed a powerful blast striking what they said was Baba Amr, sending flames shooting into the sky and a plume of black smoke over the rebel stronghold.
Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, an opposition activist group, said the shelling of Baba Amr was extremely heavy.
"The situation is tragic. There are pregnant women, people with heart problems, diabetics and, foremost, wounded people who we cannot evacuate," he said on the phone from the city.
"On Monday evening three activists entered the town by car transporting bread, baby milk and medicine," he said. "Their car was hit by a rocket. They all burned to death.
"We told them it was dangerous but they said, ‘If we don’t help the residents who will?’"
Abdullah said the humanitarian situation was worsening in Homs, where vital supplies have been cut off for days, including communications, electricity, food, medicines and water.
More than 6,000 people have been killed since Assad’s forces began their brutal crackdown on protesters calling for democracy in March, according to monitoring groups.
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