Arab team in Syria as ‘bloodbath’ condemned

ARAB League delegates arrived in Syria to arrange the deployment of foreign monitors under a plan aimed at ending the regime’s deadly 9-month-old crackdown on dissent.

They arrived in the midst of a new international uproar over activist reports that government troops killed more than 200 people in two days, with Turkey condemning President Bashar Assad over the “bloodbath”.

The opposition suspects Assad’s agreement last Monday to allow hundreds of Arab League monitors in, after weeks of stalling, is only a tactic to buy time and ward off a new round of international sanctions and condemnation. They said Assad was only intensifying his crackdown ahead of the arrival of the observers, a sure sign he is not sincere about calming violence.

Activists have accused government troops of a “massacre” on Tuesday in Kfar Owaid, a village in the rugged mountains near Syria’s northern border with Turkey. A witness and activist groups said military forces completely surrounded about 110 unarmed civilians and trapped them in a valley, then proceeded to systematically kill all of them in an hours-long barrage with tanks, bombs and gunfire. No one survived the onslaught, the activists said.

Turkey, which before the uprising was a close ally of Syria, said the violence flew in the face of the spirit of the Arab League deal that Syria signed and raises doubts about the regime’s true intentions.

“We strongly condemn the Syrian leadership’s policies of oppression against its own people, which are turning the country into a bloodbath,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. It added that no administration “can come out a winner from a struggle against its own people.”

The Obama administration said it was “deeply disturbed” by Tuesday’s attack on Kfar Owaid and accused the government of continuing to “mow down” its people. The French foreign ministry said everything must be done to stop this “murderous spiral.”

The UN says more than 5,000 people have died since March as Syria has sought to put down the uprising — part of the Arab Spring of protests that has toppled long-serving unpopular leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Fresh raids and shooting by government forces yesterday killed at least six in the city of Homs, and in the south and northern provinces, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees.

Activists said given the high death toll of the past few days, the government is trying to control the situation on the ground before the full Arab League monitoring team arrives.