Families herded "like sheep" to die in Houla massacre
AMMAN |
(Reuters) - The gunmen arrived shortly before dusk, some in uniform and some in plain clothes, before herding whole families into rooms and killing them in cold blood, according to survivors.
"They entered our homes ... men wearing fatigues herding us like sheep in the room and started spraying bullets at us," said an apparently injured woman in a video released by activists.
"My father died and my brother, my mother's only son. Seven sisters were killed," the woman said, lying next to another injured woman and near a baby with a chest wound.
The United Nations says 108 people were killed in the May 25 massacre, nearly half of them children, outraging a world long numbed by 14 months of relentless bloodshed since the start of a popular uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The events are disputed. The West blames Assad's forces, while Syria accuses its opponents, whom it refers to as Islamist "terrorists".
But video footage and accounts of activists, survivors, rights groups and United Nations observers in Syria, provide a harrowing narrative of the violence in the Houla region, about 20 km (13 miles) northwest of the city of Homs.
Crucially, the U.N. monitors say the evidence appears to contradict the government's denial that its forces and allied militia were behind the slayings.
Activists and survivors said soldiers and pro-Assad "shabbiha" militiamen from the president's minority Alawite sect carried out the onslaught on the Sunni Muslim villagers.
"They are all shabbiha of Assad. They came to us from (the nearby villages of) Fela and Sharklia. They are Alawite pigs. They attacked us and said 'die you pigs' and left," said the unidentified woman in the video, swathed in a blanket and wearing a black headscarf.
It is far from the first mass killing in Syria. But the presence on the ground of U.N. monitors - and their forthrightness in describing it as a massacre of mostly women and children - has made the incident a potential turning point in the effort to galvanize international opinion against Assad.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said 49 children and 34 women were among those killed, while fewer than 20 people had died in bombardment.
"What is very clear is that this was an absolutely abominable event that took place in Houla, and at least a substantial part of it were summary executions of civilians - women and children," Colville said.
FRIDAY PRAYERS
Like many confrontations in Syria, the violence began with protests against Assad's rule at Friday prayers in the village of Taldaou, and quickly spilled into bloodshed and clashes.
Activists said security forces fired on the demonstrators, killing several people. Free Syrian Army rebels attacked army checkpoints around the mainly Sunni villages of the Houla district, seizing control of at least one.
Up to five government armored vehicles, including tanks, were damaged in the fighting, testimony to the increasing firepower at the rebels' disposal.
"In late afternoon, Taldaou came under heavy tank shelling and rocket fire," said activist Maysara al-Hilawi, who said he had witnessed Friday's events. "A number of people were killed, and the rebels withdrew."
He said shabbiha militiamen from outlying Alawite villages entered Taldaou at around 6 p.m., under covering army fire.
According to Hilawi and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, many of the killings occurred on the southern fringe of Taldaou on a road leading southwards to the Alawite villages and a dam.
Hilawi said he had ventured out into the streets of Taldaou at around 8.30 p.m. "I found lots of people massacred in their homes on the dam road leading to the Alawite villages.
"Those who tried to escape were machinegunned and the bodies of nine men and six women who ran away were found today among the farmlands. There are more bodies of victims near roadblocks which we cannot reach."
He said 63 people from a single extended family of Sunnis called Abdelrazzaq were killed in their houses.
BLOODIED CORPSES
"The shabbiha came back at 2.30 in the morning and killed more than 15 people from the al-Sayyed family in their houses. A baby, Ali Adel al-Sayyed, miraculously survived," Hilawi said, referring to another family of Sunnis.
Several videos of the aftermath show bloodied corpses of men, women and children.
"That's Firas," screams a man in one clip, turning over the corpse of a man whose skull appears to be partially detached, a thick pool of blood beneath him.
Other footage and pictures posted on the day of the killings showed a child with its throat slit, with what appear to be burn marks near what may be an entrance wound on the upper rib cage.
Another showed a girl, apparently shot in the right eye, blood soaking the right side of her clothing.
Western leaders expressing outrage over the killings have focused on the plights of children. In another video circulated on the Internet, a child described what he said had happened.
"The soldiers came in. My mother started shouting at them for taking my brother and my uncles. They pointed their guns at her head and shot her five times," the boy said.
The boy said a soldier found his hiding place and shot at him, "but the bullet landed at my side."
"There were 11 of them - some in uniform and some civilians with shaved heads and beards - Shabbiha.... I left the house trembling, I saw the bodies of my sister, my mother and my brothers on the bed. I saw them all."
Syrian authorities restrict media access and it is impossible to verify videos posted by activists who seek to portray Assad's forces in the worst possible light. Some people shown in the videos appeared to have been prompted for their answers.
In a letter to the United Nations, the government denied any tanks had been in the area and said the killings bore the hallmarks of Islamist militants whom the government has long blamed for the violence in Syria. It said the victims had been chosen because they had publicly declared support for Assad.
That account challenged what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Sunday, citing U.N. observers who saw artillery and tank shells, as well as fresh tank tracks, along with many buildings destroyed by heavy weapons.
The U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva said most of the 108 dead were civilians and that witnesses and survivors had told U.N. investigators that most were victims of two bouts of summary executions carried out by shabbiha.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous also said the weaponry used pointed to the army, and the shabbiha were "probably" responsible for the killings.
"Part of the victims had been killed by artillery shells. Now that points ever so clearly to the responsibility of the government. Only the government has heavy weapons, has tanks, has howitzers," he told reporters in New York.
"But there are also victims from individual weapons, victims from knife wounds and that of course is less clear but probably points the way to the shabbihas, the local militia," he said.
(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and Joseph Logan; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing byAlistair Lyon and Peter Graff)
Syria massacre unlikely to break U.N. deadlock
UNITED NATIONS |
(Reuters) - A massacre in the Syrian town of Houla has sparked international outrage but is unlikely to break a year-long impasse on the U.N. Security Council between Syria's ally Russia and Western powers calling for President Bashar al-Assad's ouster.
The massacre was among the worst carnage of the 14-month uprising against Assad's government, which began as peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations but has become increasingly militarized, with signs that battled-hardened Islamist militants have come from abroad to join the fight against Assad using trademark tactics like suicide bombings.
At least seven Western nations expelled Syrian envoys from their capitals on Tuesday in a coordinated action against Damascus spurred by revulsion over the killing of more than 100 civilians in Houla, including many children.
But such moves are largely symbolic. In New York, where the United States and its European allies have tried in vain since last year to persuade Russia and China to back sanctions against Damascus, the 15-nation Security Council remains deeply split.
"There are no signs Russia and China are ready to support tougher steps at the U.N., despite what happened in Houla," a council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Russia and China vetoed two resolutions that condemned Damascus for the bloodshed, though they recently joined the rest of the council in approving the deployment of unarmed military observers and backing international mediator Kofi Annan's peace plan. The Annan plan has so far failed to stop the violence.
What would change Russia's views and the dynamics on the council in favor of tougher action against Damascus and Assad? According to David Bosco of American University in Washington, the impasse on the council will be in place as long as Assad is able to fend off efforts to topple his government.
"The council dynamics likely won't shift until the dynamics of the Syriaconflict itself shift," he said. "As long as the government has a reasonable chance of holding onto power, I'd expect Russia and China to oppose aggressive measures to weaken the regime's power."
GAME CHANGER?
Russia supported a non-binding U.N. Security Council statement on Sunday that condemned the massacre "in the strongest possible terms" and criticized the government for using heavy weapons against population centers, while simultaneously calling on all sides to end the violence.
The unanimously approved statement also said the massacre might constitute a violation of international law.
Western powers clearly hoped that the horrific nature of Houla would persuade Moscow and Beijing to sanction Syria. Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters in New York on Tuesday that he and other delegates raised the Houla massacre again during a closed-door council meeting.
"Most Security Council members raised Syria during the discussions just now, including me, making the point that the current situation was not sustainable, that more than 12,000 people had been killed, the massacre at Houla is seen by many in the region, and more widely, as a game changer," he said.
He said the council was looking ahead to Wednesday's meeting on Syria, at which it will receive a briefing from Annan's deputy Jean-Marie Guehenno on Annan's talks with Assad in Syria.
"We would like to see a proper strategic discussion at that meeting about what the next steps are going to be," he added.
"Next steps" is usually diplomatic code for sanctions.
But Russia does not appear to see Houla as a game changer and continues to blame both sides for the killings at Houla.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking with Annan by phone on Tuesday, urged the government and rebels to stop violence and repeated a call for an investigation into Houla.
Lavrov "expressed deep alarm in connection with the tragedy in Houla and underscored that all Syrian sides should reject violence without delay with the aim of preventing such incidents in the future," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The Syrian government has blamed Islamist militants for the killings in Houla.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin also condemned the "cruel killings" of Houla, comments that marked an intensification of Beijing's condemnation of the bloodshed. But Liu stopped short of directly condemning Assad's government.
On Sunday U.N. officials said it was not yet clear who was responsible for the massacre. But U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous was much less ambiguous when he spoke to reporters in New York on Tuesday.
He said that the army and "shabbiha" militia supporting Assad were "probably" responsible for massacring 108 people with artillery, tanks, small arms and knives.
Despite his "strong suspicions", he said the evidence was less clear about the shabbiha militia's involvement in the close-range killings with knives and small arms. By saying that, he did not definitively clear the rebels of blame.
That lack of clarity gives Russia and China a chance to withhold judgment and leaves the deadlock in place until a full-scale investigation presents irrefutable evidence that the government was to blame - assuming that is what U.N. investigators find.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland welcomed the Russian acceptance of a full investigation and said Washington had no doubt irrefutable evidence will arrive.
"We think it's indisputable what that investigation is going to show," she said. "It is going to show that these were regime sponsored thugs who went into villages, went into homes, and killed children at point blank range and their parents."
So far Annan's six-point peace plan and mediation efforts, as well as the deployment of nearly 300 unarmed U.N. observers, have failed to bring about a truce and launch that political dialogue between the government and opposition aimed at a "political transition" that is the core of Annan's plan.
At the same time, Ladsous made clear that there is no "Plan B" to Annan effort's, which Russia and China strongly support.
"There is no alternative, there is no other game, nobody has come out with any other plan," he said. "This is the one that we support, the one that we work for."
The U.N. observer force's 90-day mandate expires in late July. Diplomats say it is unclear if the council will renew it if the situation in Syria does not improve.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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