UN monitors enter massacre site in Syria

UN monitors entered the Syrian hamlet of Mazraat al-Qubeir yesterday, where opposition activists say at least 78 people were killed, a UN source said.

The UN observers had been trying to reach the tiny farming village of about 150 people since Thursday but had been shot at and turned back by both security forces and residents.

Some 300 UN observers are in Syria to monitor a ceasefire between president Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels that was declared by envoy Kofi Annan on Apr 12 but never implemented.

A correspondent for the BBC, Paul Danahar, said he was with the UN team and described the first traces of a violent scene in the village using his Twitter account.

“In front of me there is a piece of brain, in the corner there is a mass of congealed blood ... The largest of the two houses on the hilltop in Qubeir has been gutted by fire. The stench of flesh is still strong,” he wrote.

“Inside the buildings are gutted. The UN have not found any people yet.”

If confirmed, the killings in Mazraat al-Qubeir would be the second massacre of civilians within two weeks.

The Syrian government condemned the May 25 killings in Houla and the Wednesday attack on Mazraat al-Qubeir but blamed both on “terrorists,” who Assad has said are being steered from abroad to stir unrest in the country.

UN monitors previously visited the town of Houla where security forces and pro-Assad militia men killed 108 people, nearly half of them children, according to anti-Assad activists.

UN monitors tried to enter Mazraat al-Qubeir, 20km northwest of the city of Hama, on Thursday but were stopped at army checkpoints and by civilians in the area.

One UN observer said villagers had surrounded the team’s cars to block their passage, but said their motives were not clear.

Activists say army tanks shelled Mazraat al-Qubeir and then stormed in with plainclothes gunmen, killing more than half of the village’s 150 residents and burning many of their bodies.

Syrian state television, apparently reporting from Mazraat al-Qubeir before the monitors’ arrival, interviewed several people who covered their faces and said 500 rebels had attacked the hamlet.

Syria TV showed footage of a concrete building gashed with bullet holes and what appeared to be mortar or shell fire.

“They slaughtered men, women and children,” a woman swathed in black shouted. “This is horrible.”

Many Syrian civilians are fleeing their homes to escape widening fighting between security forces and rebels, the Red Cross said yesterday, while major powers seem unable to craft an alternative to envoy Kofi Annan’s failing peace plan.

Some 300 UN observers are in Syria to monitor a truce between president Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels that Annan declared on Apr 12 but was never implemented. Now they are reduced to just observing the violence.

More and more civilians are fleeing their homes to escape fighting, while sick or wounded people are finding it hard to reach medical services or buy food, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“The situation is rather tense in terms of fighting in many, many areas of Syria,” Hicham Hassan added.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told the general assembly a civil war was imminent and that “terrorists are exploiting the chaos” in Syria, adding that hopes of implementing Annan’s plan were fading.

Annan himself warned the UN Security Council that the crisis could soon fly out of control, diplomats said. Given the failure of Annan’s six-point plan, which called for talks on a political transition, a ceasefire and humanitarian access, there is little to check the violence, now often sectarian in nature.

China urged both sides to comply with Annan’s peace plan, which Assad and rebel forces had verbally accepted. Russia and China have twice vetoed Western- backed Security Council resolutions critical of Syria, whose security forces have killed at least 10,000 people, by a UN count, while losing more than 2,600 of their own, according to Damascus.