Pro-regime militiamen swept through farmlands in central Syria slaughtering dozens including women and children, activists said Thursday, sparking opposition calls for increased military raids by armed rebels.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 55 people were killed in Wednesday’s assault on Al-Kubeir, a small Sunni farming enclave surrounded by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama. Most of the victims were members of a single family.
The reported massacre, which Damascus denied had occurred, was condemned as “brutal and sickening” by British Prime Minister David Cameron and as “unconscionable” by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who insisted it was time for President Bashar al-Assad to go. Russia, which with China this week came out strongly against intervention and regime change in Syria, called the killings “provocations” aimed at undermining UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to end the violence. “There are 49 confirmed and identified victims in Al-Kubeir, the majority of them from the Al-Yateem family,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory.
“Among the dead are 18 women and children,” he said, adding that six other people were also killed on Wednesday in a village near Al-Kubeir, which is in a farming area northwest of Hama city. Earlier reports from opposition groups had put the death toll at between 87 and 100. The Observatory was joined by the exiled opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Muslim Brotherhood in blaming the killings on shabiha militiamen loyal to Assad’s regime. They and activists, citing survivors and witnesses, said the militiamen stormed into the small settlement on Wednesday afternoon armed with guns and knives after regime forces had pounded it with shells.
They then went on a killing spree, hacking, stabbing and shooting residents as they tried to flee.
A resident from a nearby village told AFP that the charred bodies of women and children still lay scattered in houses across Al-Kubeir on Thursday. “Burned bodies of children and women and girls were on the ground,” Laith told AFP by telephone from near Al-Kubeir.
“I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre… people were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away,” Laith said, his voice trembling. The head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, said the Syrian army was preventing his monitors from reaching the region.
“The UN Supervision Mission in Syria dispatched UN observers to Al-Kubeir early Thursday morning to verify reports of large-scale killings in the village,” Mood said in a statement.
He said the observers were stopped at army checkpoints and in some cases turned back. He said civilians were also stopping the monitors.
A video posted on YouTube showed bodies of several children, including babies, wrapped in blankets and white plastic body bags, purported to be victims of the Al-Kubeir massacre. Some were charred beyond recognition.
The Syrian government denied responsibility, saying in a televised statement: “What a few media have reported on what happened in Al-Kubeir, in the Hama region, is completely false.”
