UN monitors shot at on way to massacre site
As reports emerged of what would be the fourth such mass slaying of civilians in Syria in the last two weeks, the US condemned president Bashar al-Assad, saying he has “doubled down on his brutality and duplicity”.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said monitors were initially denied access to the scene in central Hama and “were shot at with small arms” while trying to get there.
The observers were forced to turn back and were not injured, although one vehicle was hit and slightly damaged, a UN spokesman said.
International envoy Kofi Annan, whose peace plan brokered in April has not been implemented, warned against allowing “mass killings to become part of everyday reality in Syria”.
“If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence, and even all-out civil war,” Annan told the UN General Assembly in New York. “All Syrians will lose.”
UN diplomats said Annan was expected to propose that world powers and key regional players, including Iran, come up with a new strategy to end the 15-month conflict at a closed meeting of the Security Council last night.
Annan was expected to present a plan for creating a “contact group” whose final proposal must be acceptable to Russia and China.
The latest violence centred on Mazraat al-Qubair, a small farming community of 160 people, mostly Bedouins, in central Hama province. Activists said the Sunni village is surrounded by Alawite villages. Alawites are an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam and Assad is a member of the sect, while the opposition is dominated by Sunnis.
A resident said troops shelled the area for five hours on Wednesday before government-aligned militiamen known as “shabiha” entered the area that is known to shelter army defectors, “killing and hacking everyone they could find”.
Leith al-Hamwy said he survived by hiding in an olive grove about 800m from the farms as the killings took place. But he said his mother and six siblings did not.
“When I came out of hiding and went inside the houses, I saw bodies everywhere. Entire families either shot or killed with sharp sticks and knives,” he said.
Hamwy said the gunmen set his family home on fire and his family burned to death, huddled in a concrete attic above their bathroom, where they stored food provisions. Around
Syria’s main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council, said 78 people were killed in Mazraat al-Qubair. Some of the dead were shot in the head, others were slain with knives, the council said. It said 35 of the dead were from the same family and more than half of them were women and children.
Syria denied the claims as “absolutely baseless”.
One YouTube video purported to show the bodies of babies, children, and two women wrapped in blankets and lined with frozen bottles of water to slow decomposition.
Another row of bodies lay elsewhere: A grandmother, a mother, and five siblings and two cousins, according to the video narrator. All the corpses were neatly wrapped in white sheets, more frozen water bottles tucked among them. One toddler’s arm covered her face. Their names were scrawled on pieces of paper and tucked into their shrouds.
