The United Nations monitoring mission finally visited the devastated Syrian town of Haffa yesterday only to find it deserted, largely in ruins and a "strong stench of dead bodies".
A member of the UN observers mission in Haffa Photo: REUTERS
By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
8:18PM BST 14 Jun 2012
For nearly a week reports of some of the bloodiest clashes of Syria's 15-month uprising filtered out of Haffa. Amid allegations of regime helicopter gunships attacking the town and mass casualties on both sides, fears had mounted of a civilian massacre after video footage showed the shrouded corpses of 10 children.
Monitors endeavoured to reach the town, only to be turned back by the Syrian army or forced to retreat by gunfire.
But by the time they arrived, a day after rebels were driven from the town, the evidence had been – quite literally – washed away. Anti-regime graffiti had been painted over; all that remained was a single warning that ominously warned: "If you return, so shall we".
On a rutted street, a solitary corpse bore testament to what might have happened in Haffa, a once pretty hillside town that not so long ago served as a stop-off point for tourists visiting the nearby Saladin castle, one of Syria's finest crusader sites.
Haffa's 24,000 people had fled almost in their entirety, leaving behind them still-smouldering buildings and burnt-out vehicles on rubble-strewn roads.
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A statement from the UN mission added that "a strong stench of dead bodies was in the air and there appeared to be pockets in the town were fighting is still ongoing."
A woman from the town, who gave her name as Bint al-Gabal, said: "There are not more than 100 people who stayed in the city. Haffa is now a city of ghosts." The Syrian air force had bombed the hospital and many other buildings, she added.
As the death toll has mounted, Western states have spoken with increasing urgency of the need to salvage the peace plan brokered by Kofi Annan, the international envoy to Syria, that led to the deployment of the monitors.
But an international rift between the West and Russia over how this should be done shows no sign of ending.
The major powers said they were working to try to convene a crisis meeting on Syria in Geneva on June 30 to try to revive the plan, but even this has proved divisive amid a row over whether Iran should be allowed to attend.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, made a fresh attempt to persuade Moscow to be more supportive as he held talks with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, in Kabul.
The Foreign Secretary also met Iranian officials, the most high-level contact with Tehran since the British embassy there was stormed last November.
As they talked, the violence in Syria continued to rage, with 35 more deaths reported yesterday across the country.
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