Syrian city burns as UN fails

Published on Sunday 5 February 2012 00:00

MORE than 200 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs in one of the bloodiest massacres of the uprising against the Syrian regime to date – as Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called for president Bashar al-Assad to step down.

With bodies stacked in the streets, witnesses have estimated that up to 260 people were killed, making the Homs attack the deadliest so far in Assad’s crackdown on protests and one of the bloodiest episodes in the “Arab spring” of revolts that have swept North Africa and the Middle East.

However, the assault failed to sway Russia and China, who last night vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have called on Assad to step down, despite feverish behind-the-scenes negotiations to persuade Russia to vote otherwise.

Residents said Syrian forces began shelling the Khalidiya neighbourhood of the western city of Homs on Friday night using artillery and mortars. They said at least 36 houses were completely destroyed with families still inside.

“We were sitting inside our house when we started hearing the shelling. We felt shells were falling on our heads,” said Waleed, a resident of Khalidiya.

“The morning has come and we have discovered more bodies, bodies are on the streets,” he said.

“Some are still under the rubble. Our movement is better but there is little we can do without ambulances and other things.”

An activist in the neighbourhood said residents were using primitive tools to rescue people. They feared many were buried under rubble.

“We are not getting any help, there are no ambulances or anything. We are removing the people with our own hands,” he said, adding there were only two field hospitals treating the wounded.

Each one had a capacity to deal with 30 people, but he estimated the total number of wounded at around 500.

“We have dug out at least 100 bodies so far,” he said.

A third Khalidiya resident, speaking by telephone with wailing and cries of “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] audible in the background, said at least 40 bodies had been retrieved from streets and damaged buildings.

As news of the violence spread, angry crowds of Syrians stormed their country’s embassies in Cairo, London, Berlin and Kuwait and protested in other cities.

Syria denied shelling Homs and said internet video of the dead and wounded there had been staged. It is not possible to verify activist or state media reports as Syria restricts independent media access.

The official Syrian account was disregarded across the globe, where international condemnation of the killings has been thunderous.

French foreign minister Alain Juppe said: “The Syrian authorities have jumped a new hurdle in savagery: the massacre in Homs is a crime against humanity and those responsible will have to answer for it.”

In remarks aimed at the Moscow leadership, he said any country that blocked United Nation action would bear a “heavy responsibility in history”.

Video footage on the internet showed at least eight bodies assembled in a room, one of them with the top half of its head blown off. A voice on the video said the bombardment was continuing as the footage was filmed.

The Syrian state news agency, Sana, denied Homs was shelled, accusing rebels of killing people and presenting them as casualties for propaganda purposes.

“The corpses displayed by some channels of incitement are martyrs, citizens kidnapped, killed and photographed by armed terrorist groups as if they are victims of the supposed shelling,” it quoted a “media source” as saying.

The Syrian government said it was facing a foreign-backed insurgency and that most of the dead have been its troops. Sana reported funerals of 22 members of the security forces. Some Syrian activists said the violence was triggered by a wave of army defections in Homs, a stronghold of protests against the Assad regime.

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the death toll had reached 237, with 60 people still missing.

His group said 21 other people were also killed in other parts of Syria yesterday, including 12 in a funeral procession in an outlying district of Damascus.

The opposition Syrian National Council also said 260 civilians were killed, describing it as “one of the most horrific massacres since the beginning of the uprising in Syria”.

In Cairo, a crowd stormed the Syrian embassy, smashing furniture and setting fire to parts of the building in protest over the Homs bloodshed.

The gate of the embassy was broken and furniture was smashed on the second floor of the building.

In the Syrian cities of Hama and Idlib, activists said hundreds of people had taken to the streets in an act of solidarity with those who had been killed in Homs.

In Idlib, they marched through the streets and chanted: “Homs is bombarded, and you are still sleeping?”

The opposition council said that it believed Assad’s forces were preparing for similar attacks around Damascus and in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour in the coming days.

“It does not seem they get it,” said one opposition source who declined to be named.

“Even if [the Syrian government] kill ten million of us, the people will not stop until we topple him.”