Annan expresses shock at Syria massacre reports

International envoy Kofi Annan says he is "shocked and appalled" by reports of a mass killing in the Syrian village of Tremseh.

Syrian activists have posted videos they say show at least 17 of the dozens of people reportedly killed in heavy government shelling of a farming village in central Syria yesterday.

Mr Annan brokered a peace plan for Syria that has been widely flouted by both sides of the conflict.

Today he singled out the government for criticism - saying the Tremseh killings violate "the government's undertaking to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centres".

The death toll could be more than 200, according to some activists.

They said that government gunners rained shells on the village before armed thugs moved in.

Much remains unclear about what happened in Tremseh and why Mr Assad’s troops moved against the isolated village. Local activists, who gave the high death toll, could not provide lists of names, saying they were still being compiled.

But the violence was certain to raise even more doubts about the faltering peace efforts of Mr Annan.

One amateur video posted online showed the dead bodies of 15 men lined up on a floor. Some are covered in blood and have wounds to their heads and chests.

Another video showed a young man wailing over the body of an elderly grey-haired man wrapped in a blanket and lying in the street.

“Come on, Dad. For the sake of God, get up,” the man sobs. A boom is heard in the background.

For its part, the Syrian government said more than 50 people were killed when Syrian forces clashed with “armed gangs” that were terrorising village residents.

The killings in Tremseh, about 15 kms (nine miles) north-west of the central city of Hama, reflect the difficulty of getting reliable information on events inside Syria, a country of 22 million people that is closed to most journalists.

The killings will also likely fuel further debates between world powers that remain sharply divided on what to try next to stop Syria’s violence. All previous efforts, including Mr Annan’s plan, have failed to quell the bloodshed.

Two activists reached today via Skype who said they were in villages near Tremseh gave similar accounts of the previous day’s events.

Bassel Darwish said the army surrounded the village early yesterday to prevent people from fleeing and pounded it until early afternoon with artillery and tank shells and missiles from a combat helicopter.

“We saw the events,” he said, adding that he was a few miles from the village. “Lots of people tried to get the families out but they were not able to.”

After the shelling, the army entered with pro-government thugs, known as shabiha, who gunned down and stabbed residents in the streets, he said.

Mr Darwish said activists had compiled the names of about 200 dead, but he did not share the list.

Another activist, Abu Ghazi al-Hamwi, said local rebels, often called the Free Syrian Army, tried to fight off the army but could not.

“They kept shelling the city and the weapons that the Free Army had were not enough to keep them out,” he said. “So they started trying to get out the wounded and the families by clashing in one place to open a way out.”

He, too, put the dead at more than 200. He said many of the dead were killed when a shell collapsed the roof of a mosque where they had sought shelter.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 160 people had been killed in Hama province, most of them in Tremseh, though it had the names of about 40 of them. It said dozens of the dead were rebel fighters and that the bodies of about 30 were totally burned. Others were stabbed.

The Syrian government gave a very different story of the Tremseh killing, with the state news agency saying that dozens of members of “armed terrorist groups” had raided the village and were randomly firing on residents.

Security forces clashed with the armed men, killing and capturing many of them, the report said. It said three soldiers and some 50 residents were killed.

The agency provided no photos or videos.