Rebel fighters clashed with Syrian government forces on Sunday in Idlib. The Syrian government has said the violence is the work of “terrorist armed groups.”
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: March 12, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian opposition activists said on Monday that soldiers and pro-government thugs had rounded up scores of civilians in the devastated central city of Homs overnight, assaulted men and women, then killed dozens of them, including children, and set some bodies on fire. Syria immediately denied responsibility.
The attacks prompted a major exile opposition group to sharpen its calls for international military action and arming of the rebels. Some activists called the killings a new phase of the crackdown that appeared aimed at frightening people into fleeing Homs, an epicenter of the rebellion that the Syrian government had claimed just a few weeks ago it had already pacified after a month of shelling and shootings.
The government reported the killings as well but attributed them to “terrorist armed groups,” a description it routinely uses for opponents, including armed men, army defectors and protesters in the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Syria’s restrictions on outside press access made it impossible to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the killings, which appeared to be one of the worst atrocities in the conflict. But accounts of witnesses and images posted on YouTube gave some credence to the opposition’s claims that government operatives were responsible.
An activist in Homs, Wael al-Homsi, said in a telephone interview that he had counted dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, in the Karm el-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs while helping move them to a rebel-controlled area in cars and pickup trucks. He said residents had told him that about 500 athletically built armed men, in civilian clothes and military uniforms, had killed members of nine families and burned their houses, adding, “There are still bodies under the wreckage.
“I’ve seen a lot of bodies but today it was a different sight, especially dismembered children,” Mr. Homsi said. “I haven’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday.”
In a video posted on YouTube, a man being treated for what appeared to be bullet wounds in his back said he had escaped the killings in Karm al-Zeitoun. “We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha,” he said, using a common word for pro-government thugs. After two hours of beating, he said: “They poured fuel over us. They shot us — 30 or 40 persons.”
Both activists and the Syrian government described the attacks as “a massacre,” a day after a special emissary of the United Nations and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, a former United Nations secretary general, left the country without reaching a deal to end the fighting.
News of the killings came as the United Nations Security Council debated in New York, where the United States and Russia, Syria’s main international backer, tangled over how to address the Syria crisis.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Russia and China, which have vetoed previous resolutions aimed at holding Mr. Assad accountable and beginning a political transition, to join international “humanitarian and political efforts” to end the crisis, which she attributed directly to Mr. Assad.
Mrs. Clinton added, referring to shelling and other government military action in Syrian cities over the weekend, “How cynical that, even as Assad was receiving former Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Syrian Army was conducting a fresh assault on Idlib and continuing its aggression in Hama, Homs and Rastan.”
Her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, agreed that any solution in Syria “requires an immediate end of violence.” But he said armed elements of the opposition in Syria were also responsible for the crisis there, and that the Security Council must act “without imposing any prejudged solutions.”
Mrs. Clinton had a separate meeting with Mr. Lavrov, calling it “constructive.” She told reporters he would deliver to Moscow her “very strong view that the alternative to our unity on these points will be bloody internal conflict with dangerous consequences for the whole region.”
The Syrian National Council, the main expatriate opposition group, held a news conference in Istanbul and issued a statement that intensified longstanding calls by some of its members for outside military action. George Sabra, an executive board member and a spokesman for the council, told reporters that it was a moral imperative for the international community to stop the killing and to arm the opposition Free Syrian Army.
“Words are no longer enough to satisfy the Syrian people. Therefore, we call for practical decisions and actions against the gangs of Assad. We demand Arab and international military intervention,” he said. The council, however, does not represent the entire opposition, which has struggled to agree on a unified message and includes people who oppose further militarizing the uprising, which has come to resemble a civil war.
The New York Times
Activists said scores of people were rounded up in Homs.
The United Nations estimates that 7,500 people have died since the crackdown began, making Syria’s the bloodiest of the Arab revolts.
Some individual council members have long pushed for various degrees of armed opposition. But Samir Nachar, a member of the executive office of the council, said that the overnight killings had taken the government’s crackdown to a new level and that the council would intensify public calls for the use of force.
“All these massacres are ethnic and sectarian cleansing against people in Homs. They’re terrorizing people there in an attempt to make them flee the city,” he said. “Bashar is saying, ‘I will carry on,’ so what political solution are we still seeking?”
Reports of the Homs killings also prompted street protests in at least five Syrian towns and cities, including the commercial center of Aleppo and the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising began, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, an activist group.
Activists’ reports of killings in at least two neighborhoods in Homs varied in some of the details and in the death tolls, which were estimated at between 47 and 53.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, echoing what individual activists said in videos and interviews, said in an e-mail that the army had arrested several families and took them to shabiha in nearby neighborhoods known for supporting the government. About 30 men were tortured, shot, doused with gasoline and set on fire, and women and children were killed separately, according to the group, which is based in London.
But the state news agency said it was “terrorist armed groups” who had “kidnapped scores of civilians, mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets.”
Mulham al-Jundi, an activist from Homs who fled the city a few days earlier, said in a Skype interview that he had spoken with an activist who had filmed the bodies, Karam Abu Rabeaa. He said that the neighborhood was deserted and that some kidnapped women were still missing.
In an activist video, a distraught man pointed to what appeared to be 6 bodies wrapped in blankets in one room of a building, and at least 10 more crammed into another small, blood-spattered room.
“The army encircled the area and the shabiha entered,” a man declared in a video posted on YouTube. “Where are you, Arabs?” he shouted. “Where are you, Kofi Annan?”
Mr. Annan said through a spokesman on Monday that he felt that his Syria mediation mission was moving in the right direction despite the new spasms of violence.
“This is the beginning of a process, and the joint special envoy feels the process is on the right track,” his spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, told reporters.
Reporting was contributed by Hala Droubi, Hwaida Saad and Kareem Fahim from Beirut, Alan Cowell from London, Dan Bilefsky and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul, Steven Lee Myers from Washington, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 13, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Massacre Is Reported in Homs, Raising Pressure for Intervention in Syria..
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21 Comments
Carl Loeber San
Obama will continue to do nothing until he mans up to his position as chief of the American tribes .. he does not need to put his skin on the line .. only his political fortunes .. he did not need to send troops a year ago to Syria .. only give the order to push the launch buttons on cruise missiles and drone strikes against the dictators in Syria .. his cowardly talk of sanctions and UN statements is embarrassing to the American spirit ..
March 13, 2012 at 5:14 a.m
JamVee Oro Valley, AZ
In this conflict, the only thing you can believe, for sure, is that both sides are lying.
March 13, 2012 at 5:14 a.m
Phony Media Vancouver, BC
a day after a United Nations envoy ended two days of meetings with President Bashar al-Assad without securing a deal to end the nearly year-old conflict.
Always the killing intensifies before or after a meeting to ensure no possible solution by the beneficiary. If indeed the government has committed those crimes, would do its best to hide them not to expose them. Meaning berry the evidence not expose it. When the 6 US soldiers raped Abeer Qaseen in Iraq they burned her body and the house to eliminate traceability. The government has the interest of calming things and NOT hyper activate them. Therefore, the rebels take advantage of the situation to ensure no slow down at ALL.
Mrs. Clinton instead of expressing its anger should start pulling her proxies.
Read: Stephen Lendman: Assad’s more victim than villain. Violence would stop today if Washington called off its dogs. Instead, it rages out-of-control. Assad’s unfairly blamed. The world heads perilously toward more.
March 13, 2012 at 5:14 a.m.
Steve ThompsonMaine
As shown in this article, the United States already has plans in place to launch action against the Syrian regime as shown here:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-may-lie-ahead-for-syri...
This action would be far different than that taken against Libya, largely because Syria has very well defended airspace along its borders and in the area surrounding Damascus.
March 13, 2012 at 5:14 a.m
Hussain Kreiba Zliten
Following his meeting with Alassad, what kind of hope and optimism that Annan is expressing if Alassad regards those fighting for their freedom as armed gangs, terrorists, a group of Syrians involved in a conspiracy.
Alassad forces are still targeting civilians while he is holding his meeting with Annan to reach a peaceful solution. That reminds us of Gaddafi's contradictory behaviour. As his troops were killing Libyans across Libyan, he was meeting high-level officials from all over the globe, and explaining how Al-Qaeda would pose a threat to the international peace and security. He even said that he was not dealing with revolutionizes who had legal demands, but with drug addicts.
"You can not turn the wind, so turn the sail", said Annad to Alassad. So he urged Alassad to move towards respecting and admitting the legal demands for the Syrians for a political change. But did that appeal to the president of Syria? Annad advised Alassad to stop killing. What I am thinking about is Alassad's reply. He never believes that he is a killer, but a victim fighting terrorism and not for the sake of his interest. It is for the sake of all those he has killed and continues killing.
I can only believe that there is a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria when Alassad and his Baathists change the language of accusation and step down not only because of their criminal acts, but also because of the Syrians' right to break with autocracy.
March 13, 2012 at 5:13 a.m
Realist Guy Pennsylvania
Is the situation in Syria so bad that it's worth putting potentially tens of thousands more civilians' lives at risk with no guaranty we can stop the massacres?
Assad's bloody repression is causing roughly 50 dead per year per 100,000 inhabitants (10,000/yr for a population of 20.7 million). That mortality rate puts Syria a little above the middle of the pack for countries with the most murders per capita: Honduras (82.1), El Salvador (66), Cote D'Ivoire (56.9), Jamaica (52.1), Venezuela (49.0), Belize (41.7), Guatemala (41.4), St Kitts (38.2), Zambia (38), and Uganda (36.3).
Looked at another way, this compares to the most dangerous US cities: New Orleans (49) and St Louis (40).
March 13, 2012 at 5:10 a.m
Realist Guy Pennsylvania
Is the cost in lives (local and US) worth the benefit in lives saved?
March 13, 2012 at 5:10 a.m
SofianitzCalifornia
"Mr. Annan flew to Qatar on Sunday for talks with that country’s emir, a leading critic of the Syrian government who has called for arming the rebels."
How droll. The emir of Qatar (and the Saudis) are financing most of the massive supply of weapons now pouring into Syria from Libya and elsewhere, through "Free Syrian Army" bases in southern Turkey, ferried there daily by unmarked NATO C-130's.
March 13, 2012 at 3:42 a.m
______ Carl LoeberSan JoseReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..the cowardly West .. President Obama should have sent cruise missiles a year ago into the dictator palace when he first started shooting pro-democracy demonstrators .. finally someone is doing something besides talking .. the Obama White House only talked about this massacre for one year and does nothing ..
Coward in the White House ... Cowards in for leaders in Istanbul .. Cowards for leaders in Germany France England Canada Italy Sweden Norway Holland Belgium Spain ..
March 13, 2012 at 5:14 a.m
Elie ChalalaLos AngelesReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..I am uncomfortable with the title of this article "claims and counter claims," which gives credence to what the authors themselves call "propaganda war."
March 13, 2012 at 3:42 a.m
beholderSaint LouisReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..While the security forces of the Syrian government are quite capable of this kind of inhuman atrocity,one cannot at the same time completely ignore the history of the Homs rebels in commiting similar heinous outrages.Further ,a latest BBC report suggests that the rebels smuggle their trusted Western journalists into Syria across the Turkish and Lebanese borders.But those journalists from the West,who arrive in the country on regular visas,are viewed with suspicion and subjected to all kinds of questions by the rebels.It is thus almost impossible to believe the claims and counter claims being made in this heartbreaking tragedy.
March 13, 2012 at 2:57 a.m
C.J. LacayoManagua, NicaraguaReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..What is the magic number the death toll needs to reach, to say, ok we must stop the massacre. Is it 10,000??? 20,000??? 30,000?? 50,000????
Obama did not lead the toppling of Kahdaffi, UK and France did... this is Obama to actually lead!!
March 13, 2012 at 2:57 a.m
PatrickAustraliaReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..Open up your minds, can't you read, can't you see, can't you analyse fabricated news ... what's happening, technology advances and people get more stupid. Media is allowed in Syria. In fact even if they are not allowed they get there illegally.
However the most interesting phenomena in this century, is using internet and social networking to fabricate news and change millions of people opinions about global issues to legitimize wars, attacks, destruction, mass marketing or to cover issues happening without an attention. Eventually, Oil, Gas, water source, rich lands, logistics ... etc are the most attractive targets, specially in the current economical crises.
Unfortunately human rights, freedom, democracy are just words are used to lead the poor and uneducated mass populations. What happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is absolutely shame on humanity, and shall be regretted and remembered for ever.
A US soldier in Afghanistan killed a whole family, but he had a bad moment or maybe he is mentally sick.
Anyhow, freedom is for those who deserve it, not for those who fight each other for few petrodollar
March 13, 2012 at 2:56 a.m
Craig R.Silver Spring, MD.Report Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..CNN's portrayl of this massacre was aired on Sunday night. The atrocities commited were so overwhelming, I could not hold my emotions in. We and our allies can no longer stand on the sidelines as thousands continue to be slaughtered. We must now act with our allies and put an end to this. We did not stay on the sidelines during Serbia's ethnic cleansing. The Arab league is in full support of assisting the rebels. (I don't even like to call them rebels.) Send arms now!!
March 13, 2012 at 2:55 a.m
______ Something else Somewhere else
Craig, what will weapons do except extend this and make the Syrian government stand further back when they shell rebel positions? It's not the government that's trying to take over towns and hold the people as human shields. And save your outrage sir! Have you heard what happened in Afghanistan?
March 13, 2012 at 3:42 a.m.Recommended6
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I think the rub here, the reason no one is stepping up to help the citizens of Syria's wretched evil al-Assad regime is because of Iran and the whole Sunni/Shia split that has various factions of the Middle East at each other's throats periodically. If Nato, for example, went in there and bombed Assad's forces, (which are often assembled near large, civilian populations in order to maximize "collateral damage") Iran (and Russia and probably China) would come to the their defense and we would really have an enormous regional war on our hands. That being said, it is disgusting, depressing and horrifying to see what the State of Syria is doing to its people, and if I were the praying type, I would pray for the end of this regime. Just revolting.
March 13, 2012 at 2:11 a.m.
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_______ Something else Somewhere else
The rebels blew up a retired boxer yesterday. I mean, a retired boxer!
March 13, 2012 at 3:41 a.m
billcole Sitges
"The Syrian government routinely refers to its opponents, including armed men, army defectors and protesters, as terrorists."
I can't think of any other goverment that does that...oh, wait....
March 13, 2012 at 2:10 a.m.Recommended8
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Y.H.Wisconsin, USAReport Inappropriate Comment. Vulgar . Inflammatory . Personal Attack . Spam . Off-topic ..SubmitCancel .
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..The Assad regime refuses to allow world media in , while the opposition has consistently called for News Media to look at this conflict. Foreign journalists who managed to sneak in have supported the opposition claims of regime atrocities.
Anyone supporting the claims of the Assad regime has no shame.
March 13, 2012 at 1:35 a.m
syrian damascus
It is so disgusting that the world is letting this massacre against Syrian people.
International community is to be blamed for allowing Assad mafia regime get a way with crimes against humanity.
March 13, 2012 at 12:24 a.m.Recommended5
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..Eventually, al Assad will be toppled and then, assuming he doesn't end up in a culvert ala Kaddafi, he will be brought before the world court for his crimes against humanity. Given that, what can be promised to him now that will cause him to step down? One last spring trip to Paris for him and his wife? A fur-lined noose? An extra-spacious holding cell while he's on trial?
The best he can hope for is that he can exchange himself for some of his posse ((maybe the wife and kids get off). But in any case, I just can't imagine why he would step down ever. Better to kill off as many dissenters as possible like daddy did and hope for the best. It worked for daddy.
March 13, 2012 at 12:24 a.m
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