Syrian troops bomb rebel-held area in Homs
Syrian troops on Friday shelled a rebel-held neighbourhood in the
flashpoint central city of Homs as President Bashar Assad’s troops
appeared to be readying to storm the area that has been out of
government control for months, activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local
Coordination Committees had no immediate word on casualties from the
shelling of Hom’s Khaldiyeh neighbourhood. Amateur videos posted online
showed a small white plane, apparently a drone, flying over Homs.
Friday’s violence came two days after reports of mass killing in the
nearby province of Hama where about 80 people, including women and
children, were shot or stabbed. U.N. observers came under fire on
Thursday as they tried to reach the site in Mazraat al-Qubair, a small
farming community of 160 people, mostly Bedouins.
In Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Hicham
Hassan told reporters on Friday that the humanitarian situation in Syria
was worsening.
“Currently the situation is extremely tense, not only in Houla, not only
in Hama, but in many, many places around the country,” he said
referring to the string of villages known as Houla, where more than 100
people were massacred last month. The Opposition and the regime blamed
each other for the Houla massacre.
The ICRC wants to help 1.5 million people, some of whom need basic
assistance such as bread. Hassan said many are also worried about people
they have left behind adding that most of the people who fled from
Taldaw, a village in the Houla region, were women and children.
“They don’t know what happened to the people who remained,” he said.
Also on Friday, the opposition called for anti-government protests after the weekly noon prayers.
It was still not clear if observers have entered Mazraat al-Qubair,
where activists said dozens of people, including women and children,
were killed on Wednesday. A team that tried to reach the area on
Thursday was shot at.
Activists said the Sunni village is surrounded by Alawite villages.
Alawites are an offshoot of Shia Islam and Mr. Assad is a member of the
sect, while the opposition is dominated by Sunnis.
A government statement on Thursday on the state-run news agency SANA
said “an armed terrorist group committed an appalling crime” in Mazraat
al-Qubair, killing nine women and children. It said residents appealed
for protection from Hama authorities, who sent security forces who went
to the farm, stormed a hideout of the group and clashed with its
fighters.
As reports emerged about the Mazraat al-Qubair, that would be the fourth
such mass slaying of civilians in Syria in the last two weeks, the
United States condemned Mr. Assad, saying he has “doubled down on his
brutality and duplicity.”
U.N. patrols in Syria have on several instances been deliberately
targeted with heavy weapons, armour-piercing ammunition and a
surveillance drone, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security
Council, according to a senior U.N. official. The official, speaking on
condition of anonymity because Thursday’s council meeting was private,
said Mr. Ban also reported repeated incidents of firing close to U.N.
patrols, apparently to get them to withdraw.
International envoy Kofi Annan, whose peace plan brokered in April has
not been implemented, warned against allowing “mass killings to become
part of everyday reality in Syria.”
“If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal
repression, massacres, sectarian violence, and even all-out civil war,”
Mr. Annan told the U.N. General Assembly in New York. “All Syrians will
lose.”
U.N. diplomats said Mr. Annan was proposing that world powers and key
regional players, including Iran, come up with a new strategy to end the
15-month conflict at a closed meeting of the Security Council that took
place on Thursday.
Comments