Entire families have been burnt or hacked to death in a small farming village in central Syria, activists have reported, in a grim manifestation of the sectarian hatred fomenting within the country.
Haswiyeh is not far from the region of Houla, where 108 people were killed over two days last May Photo: AP
By Ruth Sherlock, Antakya
4:54PM GMT 17 Jan 2013
Syrian opposition sources from Homs said loyalist militiamen backed by government troops swept through the hamlet of Haswiyeh just north of the city, torching houses and slashing victims to death with knives.
The Britain-based opposition group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "whole families were executed", with one family losing up to 32 members, including women and children.
The death count of the attack, which was said to have started on Tuesday, varied from 32 to more than 106. Youssef al-Homsi, an activist based in Homs, said at least 100 people were killed, including dozens of women and children, and sent The Associated Press a list of 100 names said to have been killed, including 15 women and 10 children.
This newspaper is not able to independently verify these reports. On Wednesday a government official in Damascus rejected any government role in the alleged killings, and said, "the army protects civilians and their properties."
The area around Haswiyeh was the scene of heavy fighting earlier this week between troops and rebels, who have retained control of several neighborhoods in Homs. Waleed al-Fares, an activist in the area said that most of the victims were Sunnis and that many of the attackers came from the nearby village of Mazraa, which he said is predominantly Shia.
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Homs province is home to the Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam and Christian minority groups. The former have tended to side with the Syrian government, pitching them against the Sunni majority led rebel opposition. In almost two years of fighting, the political disagreements between them have degenerated into to sectarian based hatred, with many opposition rebels referring to government supporters simply as "Alawites".
Haswiyeh is not far from the region of Houla, where 108 people were killed over two days last May. The UN described the Houla killings as a war crime perpetrated by the government forces and shabiha militia backing Assad's regime.
Syrians closely monitoring the crises in mixed sect parts of the country have noticed a sharp increase in the number of sectarian killings during the past month, and in the brutality of the methods used.
Several videos have been posted online over the past month of men being slowly, torturously murdered with knives.
In one piece of footage seen by The Daily Telegraph, two man stand, whimpering, with their hand against a wall. Behind them, bearded men in military fatigues begin slashing at the men's T-shirts with knives, swearing and proclaiming their support for the Syrian president. Then they begin cutting the flesh on the men's backs. Whipping themselves into frenzy, they eventually stab their screaming victims several times in theirs sides until they cannot stand any longer and fall bloody and dying to the floor.
In private conversations, senior ranking rebel commanders have admitted to The Daily Telegraph that the killings are being perpetrated on both sides.
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