UN: Civil war in Syria as death toll passes 4,000

SYRIA has entered a state of civil war with more than 4,000 people dead and an increasing number of soldiers defecting from the army to take up arms against President Bashar Assad’s regime, the UN’s top human rights official has warned.

Assad has been trying to crush an eight-month-old revolt against his autocratic rule, but the violence has only intensified.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said the UN is putting the death toll for the revolt “at 4,000 but really the information coming to us is that it’s much more than that”.

“As soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms, I said this in August before the Security Council, that there’s going to be a civil war,” Pillay told reporters in Geneva. “And at the moment that’s how I am characterising this.”

The criticism comes as the pressure from home and abroad piles on Assad. Last night, the EU imposed fresh sanctions on Damascus, and the Syrian opposition called a general strike.

The recent spate of economic sanctions from the EU, the Arab League and Turkey are punishing Syria’s ailing economy, a dangerous development for the government. Syrian business leaders have long traded political freedoms for economic privileges in the country, where the prosperous merchant classes are key to propping up the regime.

But the sanctions, coupled with increasing calls for strikes, could sap resolve.

The new EU sanctions target 12 people and 11 companies, and add to a long list of those previously sanctioned by the EU.

The 27-member bloc also imposed sanctions on Syria’s ally Iran in the wake of an attack this week by a mob on the British Embassy in Tehran, the capital.

British foreign secretary William Hague accused Iran of supporting Assad’s crackdown, saying, “there is a link between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in Syria”.

The sanctions came as Syrian troops stormed a village in the central province of Hama, killing at least six people.

It was difficult to gauge how widely Syrians were abiding by yesterday’s strike. The regime has sealed the country off from foreign journalists and prevented independent reporting.

Residents in Syria’s two economic powerhouses — the capital, Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo — reported business as usual. But in the flashpoint city of Homs, residents said most of the shops were closed, except for those selling food.

Despite the recent diplomatic squeeze, the government has shown little sign of easing its crackdown.

The Local Coordination Committees activist group said security forces swept through the village of Traimseh in Hama. The group said six people were killed, without giving further details.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said six people were killed and nine wounded in Traimseh.

Also yesterday, the government took local journalists on a trip to the village of Kfarbo in Hama province, where they spoke to the family of a 9-year-old boy who was shot dead in Homs three days ago while he was buying biscuits from a shop.

“He was holding a biscuit in his hand not a pistol,” the child’s mother, Georgina Mtanious al-Jammal, said. “They have burned my heart.”

She blamed “armed terrorists” for killing her son.

The shooting is particularly resonant in Syria because the boy, Sari Saoud, was from a Christian family.

Christians and other religious minorities in Syria generally support the regime because they feel it offers them important protections.

Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and many minorities fear they will be marginalised if a Sunni regime takes over. Assad and the ruling elite are from the tiny Alawite sect.