Fresh killings in Syria draw condemnation

14 Jul 2012, 10:08 am   -   Source: AAP
Rebels claim an attack on Treimsa could be one of the worst days of bloodshed in the uprising. (AAP)

Rebels claim an attack on Treimsa could be one of the worst days of bloodshed in the uprising. (AAP)

Peace envoy Kofi Anan and the US have denounced Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after a massive military assault on a village reportedly killed scores.

UN special envoy Kofi Annan, the Obama administration and the Syrian opposition have denounced President Bashar al-Assad after a massive military assault against a village involving tanks, artillery and helicopters a day earlier caused the deaths of possibly scores of civilians.

Russia, Syria's principal international backer, also condemned the assault and called for an investigation, but it stopped short of ascribing blame. Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said vaguely that "forces" were stoking sectarian violence, a possible reference to foreign nations such as Qatar and Turkey that are backing the Syrian opposition.

"We have no doubt that this atrocity benefits the forces that seek no peace but obstinately keep trying to grow the seeds of (sectarian) strife and civil conflict in Syria," Lukashevich said in Moscow, according to the Russian Itar-Tass news agency.

Outraged at the purported scope of the attack - possibly the single deadliest event yet in the 16-month-old revolt - Syrian revolutionaries took to Facebook and other social media to criticise Annan's lacklustre observer mission and demand his removal.

Annan was called a "servant of Assad and Iran", the regime's close regional ally. Activists warned that Syria would be "Annan's second Rwanda", a reference to the African genocide that Annan publicly has said he could have done more to prevent during his tenure as head of UN peacekeeping forces during the mid-1990s.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a strongly worded condemnation of the killings in and around the village of Tremseh and said the violence should prompt the UN Security Council to "put its full weight behind the Annan plan for an immediate ceasefire and a political transition".

"History will judge this council," Clinton continued, in an implicit warning to Russia and China, which have blocked action against Assad at the Security Council.

"Its members must ask themselves whether continuing to allow the Assad regime to commit unspeakable violence against its own people is the legacy they want to leave."

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was "anguished to learn about a new mass killing of peaceful Syrian citizens who were shot point-blank by unidentified monsters". It was Moscow's strongest statements about the violence in Syria to date, but it remained far from clear whether the fresh reports would change Russia's stance on Assad's future.

People in Tremseh, a predominantly Sunni village near the city of Hama, initially reported that more than 200 people were killed, many of them while fleeing the assault by tanks, artillery, infantry and pro-Assad "shabiha" militia, the opposition Syrian National Council said. On Friday, locals reportedly had scaled back the estimate, with one witness confirming 74 dead to The Associated Press and another providing 103 names of alleged victims.

Anti-government activists' videos, posted online, showed chilling scenes - more than 30 blanket-wrapped bodies laid out for burial, a young man sobbing over his father's corpse - but so far no video has emerged to confirm the huge scale of killings described by the activists.

SANA, the Syrian state news service, offered a starkly different version of events, reporting that Tremseh was overrun by "terrorists" - the government's catch-all term for participants in the uprising - and suffered heinous killings and attacks before the "competent security units" arrived at the request of the besieged villagers.

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