Thousands of refugees were Sunday night massing near the Lebanese border with Syria, fleeing the advance of President Bashar al-Assad’s elite Fourth Division and the revenge they fear it will wreak as it retakes districts once in the hands of the rebels.
Syrian refugees arrive at Qaa village in northern Lebanon Photo: REUTERS
By By Ruth Sherlock, Beirut and Magdy Samaan and Richard Spencer in Cairo
8:23PM GMT 04 Mar 2012
The United Nations said 2,000 people were at or near the Lebanese border where it comes close to the city of Homs, with more sheltering in nearby towns and villages.
The Fourth Division, led by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, and given the role of spearheading the attack because of concerns over the loyalty of other troops, turned its attention to nearby suburbs after retaking Baba Amr, scene of the uprising’s worst fighting, at the end of last week. Other units were attacking northern parts of the country that had also been freed from regime control.
Activists said at least 12 people, including three children and three women, died on Sunday in shelling on the Homs suburb of Rastan. On Friday and Saturday, it was alleged by several activists and refugees that men from Baba Amr had been rounded up separately from the women and children and taken away.
Ten were lined up against the wall of the Consumer Society, which was being used as a holding centre, and shot outright, they said.
Homs is less than 20 miles from the Lebanese border, and large tracts of territory that lies in between have been under the control of the Free Syrian Army, which has been able to set up its own patrols openly until now.
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It also controlled much of the town of Qusayr, around seven miles from the border.
“There are a large number of people crossing or waiting to cross into Lebanon from Syria,” Dana Sleiman, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Lebanon said. “Our local partners on the ground estimate there being up to 2,000 people seeking to come across today alone.
“They are massing in al Qaa village in the northern Bekaa valley. We are ready to assist refugees with food, blankets, mattresses and have partner NGOs working to provide fuel.”
Yousef, one of the refugees now just on the Lebanese side, said: “The situation is so terrible. Today there was horrible shelling of Qusayr, we had no choice but to flee.
“We all had to run for our lives towards the Lebanese border. I saw so many families running. There are four thousand families waiting on the border now. It is snowing and it is bitterly cold.”
Those who fled Baba Amr as the army moved in described streets that had disappeared under the ferocity of the regime’s assault.
Emad Ghalioun, a member of the Syrian parliament for Homs who defected and flew to Cairo earlier this year, accused the regime of carrying out a “scorched earth policy” in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“The regime is trying to empty the city of its inhabitants, and burning the houses,” he said. “The goal is to create a state of chaos in the country.”
He claimed the regime’s command of its own troops was not sufficient to quell the population using normal means.
“They are using heavy weapons, because they cannot impose their control on the ground,” he said. “The Army is still not in full control of Baba Amr yet. They are hiding in their tanks and aren’t confident of being able to walk in the streets of the neighborhood.”
The FSA said it withdrew from Baba Amr to protect civilians from the effects of the fighting. “We were not able to withstand this force,” one FSA lieutenant said. “I watched the rockets bringing down entire houses with families trapped inside. It was in that moment I knew we had to pull out.
“We had two plans prepared for leaving Baba Amr. Plan A failed - it meant passing through an area that the regime bombed heavily when we took Edith Bouvier, the french journalist out the day before. Plan B worked, most of our men escaped. But we could not get all the civilians out.
“It was another unit’s job to help the civilians escape. We created a diversion in the opposite part of the city as a distraction. We hit a convoy using AK47s and 63mm mortar rounds. They replied with anti aircraft guns. Two of my men died in the attack”.
Activists posted videos online of what they said were retributive killings of civilians by regime forces.
In one attack, 17 people, including six people from one family, the Sabouh family, had been hacked to death and some corpses partially decapitated. A resident who gave his name as Abu Mohammed al-Homsi said he believed that 3,000 wounded people were left behind, distributed between 20 makeshift hospitals in private houses.
Nevertheless, the Syrian authorities continued to block access to Baba Amr by the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose representatives have been waiting to enter since Friday. A spokesman in Damascus said it had received the “green light” but there was no sign of it being allowed in last night.
“Every day there is a funeral of a wounded person who died though their injuries were only moderate,” Abu Mohammed said.
Those who managed to escape described a traumatic flight through the tunnel that has been the main way in and out of Baba Amr for much of the last few weeks.
“My wife left first,” said a former volunteer at the Baba Amr media centre, who gave his name as Bassel Fouad and said he had been there when it was hit in the attack which killed The Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and the freelance French photographer Remi Ochlik.
“The FSA escorted her from a house all the way to Jobar neighbourhood on Homs outskirts. She slept the night there. The next day she walked a long way, carrying what posessions she could, and our baby, holding the toddler by the hand.”
Eventually he followed her. “I escaped through the tunnel we had used to bring in supplies,” he said. “It is bombed now. Then I changed cars over and over again. We used back roads between the trees, like a jungle.”
Mr Fouad said he had left behind a scene of devastation. “If you saw the street where the media house was you would be terrified,” he said. “There is nothing left. There is no street.”
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