CRISIS IN SYRIA (merged)

bb1 wrote:Amazing, someone has acted, instead of making pious noises.

bb1 wrote:Ah, thanks, LL, I had missed that.

Most Houla massacre victims executed: U.N.; France, Australia expelling Syria envoys
Tuesday, 29 May 2012

By AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES

Fewer than 20 of the 108 people confirmed as having been killed in the “appalling massacre” in the Syrian town of al-Houla died from artillery and tank fire, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday, as each of France and Australia announced expelling the Syrian envoys over the massacre.

Survivors have told U.N. investigators that most of the other victims died in two bouts of summary executions carried out by pro-government Shabbiha militia in the nearby village of Taldaou, U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville said, according to Reuters.

“I believe at this point, and I would stress we are at very preliminary stages, that under 20 of the 108 can be attributed to artillery and tank fire,” he told a news briefing in Geneva, adding that 49 children and 34 women were among the victims.

Colville told reporters that most of the other victims were summarily executed in two separate incidents. He said the conclusions of the U.N. monitors are corroborated by other sources, The Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, France is expelling Syria’s ambassador over the escalating crisis there and will host a new Friends of Syria meeting in early July, President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday.

Hollande, speaking to reporters after a Paris meeting with Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi, said of Syria that “among the decisions taken, there is the expulsion of the Syrian ambassador in France. This is not a unilateral decision but in consultation with our partners.”

Australia, meanwhile, expelled Syria’s top diplomat over the “hideous and brutal” massacre at Houla of more than 100 people, with Foreign Minister Bob Carr saying he expected other countries to follow suit.

Syrian charge d’affaires Jawdat Ali was notified of the decision to expel him and one other diplomat a day after he was called in to meet with officials over the killings, which sparked global condemnation.

“This is the most effective way we’ve got of sending a message of revulsion to the Syrian government,” Carr told journalists.

He said Ali, Syria’s highest ranked diplomat in Australia, and the other unnamed official had 72 hours to leave the country.

“This massacre of more than 100 men, women and children in al-Houla was a hideous and brutal crime,” Carr said, according to AFP.

“The Syrian government can expect no further official engagement with Australia until it abides by the U.N. ceasefire and takes active steps to implement the peace plan agreed with Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan.”

The decision came as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received Annan for a meeting in Damascus, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.

Carr said Ali had been advised to convey a clear message to Damascus that Australians were appalled by the killings and Canberra would pursue a unified international response to hold those responsible to account.

“They’re appalled at a regime that could connive in or organize the execution, the killing of men, women and children,” he said.

“Australians want that conveyed. And the best way of conveying it right now, given the restraints of what we deal with in the U.N. in New York, is to expel Syrian diplomats from Australia.”

Carr added that Australia took the action “with other nations around the world” and he expected similar announcements to be made in other capitals soon.

“We are moving more or less with our friends in the world -- I expect other countries to be doing this overnight Australian time,” Carr said.

The foreign minister refused to say which other countries would take similar action, but Canberra is strong allies with the United States and Britain.

He said the international response could include referrals to the International Criminal Court and imposing U.N. sanctions such as an arms embargo as well as financial and travel restrictions on identified individuals.

Annan, who will seek to salvage his battered Syrian peace plan during “frank” talks with Assad, called the massacre in the central town “an appalling moment with profound consequences.”

Houla: How a massacre unfolded

At least 108 people were killed in Taldou, the majority of them women and children
Continue reading the main story

The village of Taldou, near the town of Houla in Syria's Homs province was the scene of one of the worst massacres in the country's 14-month-long uprising on Friday.

United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, but the majority appear to have been shot or stabbed at close range.

But at whose hands they died remains a matter of contention. Anti-government activists, eyewitnesses and human rights groups - including the UN's high commissioner for human rights - point the finger at the Syrian army and the shabiha, a sectarian civilian militia that supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The government however denies all responsibility, saying its soldiers were attacked and armed terrorists went on to shoot and knife civilians.

The United Nations has condemned the "indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force", but Maj Gen Robert Mood, the head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria, said "the circumstances that led to these tragic killings are still unclear".

Continue reading the main story
“

Quote

I was in a room by myself when I heard the sound of a man. He was shouting and yelling at my family. I looked outside the room and saw all of my family members shot”

Survivor of the Houla massacre

Protest attacked
The picture being pieced together by activists, survivors and the limited number of international journalists and human rights organisations in Syria is of an attack that began with the army shelling the town and ended with militiamen killing people house-by-house late into the night.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said initial investigations suggest the majority of the victims were "summarily executed in two separate incidents" while fewer then 20 were killed by artillery or shell fire.

Eyewitnesses say that at about 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT) on Friday, just after midday prayers, soldiers fired on a protest in Taldou in the Houla area to disperse the crowds.

Some accounts report that opposition fighters then attacked the Syrian army position where the firing was coming from.

According to Syria's foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, "hundreds of gunmen" armed with machine guns, mortars and anti-tank missiles attacked soldiers, killing three.

Activists and eyewitnesses say the Syrian army shelled the town, reportedly at first with tank fire then with mortars, in a sustained bombardment that lasted at least two hours.

This tallies with UN accounts of tank and mortar shells in civilian areas. The UN Security Council issued a statement saying that "such outrageous use of force against civilian population constitutes a violation of applicable international law".

Mr Makdissi said that the army did not send tanks into the village and security forces remained in their defensive positions.

House-to-house attacks
Any civilian deaths, he said, were the result of "armed terrorist gangs" going house to house and killing men, women and children.

But according to activists and eyewitnesses interviewed by the BBC, other media and human rights groups, army shelling paved the way for a concerted ground attack by the Alawite-dominated pro-government militia, the shabiha.

The region of Houla, in the west of Syria, comprises several villages and small towns.
The village of Taldou lies around 2km south-west of the main town, also called Houla
The area is in the province of Homs, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months
Houla's villages are predominantly Sunni Muslim, but the region is ringed by a number of Alawite villages - the sect of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
Their reports suggest that men from the shabiha entered people's houses in army fatigues and either cut their throats or shot them in the head from approximately 16:00 to 01:00 on Saturday morning.

One opposition activist from the area, Hamza Omar, told the BBC: "The shabiha militias attacked the houses. They had no mercy. We took pictures of children, under 10 years [old] their hands tied, and shot at close range."

If that is the case, it is possible the killers were drawn from a string of largely Alawite villages to the south of Houla region. Fearing reprisals, some residents there have apparently been donating blood to help the approximately 300 injured.

Many of the dead come from the extended Abdul Razak family, which has a cluster of houses near to each other in the village.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, an elderly woman from the family recounted: "I was in the house with my three grandsons, three granddaughters, sister-in-law, daughter, daughter in-law and cousin.

"At about 18:30 we heard gunshots. I was in a room by myself when I heard the sound of a man. He was shouting and yelling at my family. I hid behind the door... They were wearing military clothes.

"After three minutes, I heard all my family members screaming and yelling... As I approached the door, I heard several gunshots. I heard the soldiers leaving. I looked outside the room and saw all of my family members shot."

'Heroic Syrian army'

The UN observer mission in Syria is investigating the massacre
These eyewitness accounts are by video evidence and have also been confirmed by the Syrian government, although they blamed terrorists for the attacks.

"Women, children and old men were shot dead. This is not the hallmark of the heroic Syrian army," foreign ministry spokesperson Jihad Makdissi told reporters in Damascus.

At a news conference in Moscow with his British counterpart William Hague on Monday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said it was clear the army had used tank shells but not who shot civilians at point blank range.

Alexei Pushkov, chair of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament, the Duma, was more explicit on Monday: "We have very strong doubts that those people who were shot at point-blank [range] and were stabbed, that this was the action of forces loyal to President Assad," he told the BBC.

"The shelling was probably the responsibility of the troops of Mr Assad, but the stabbing and point-blank firing was definitely from the other side."

The UN's Maj Gen Mood told the BBC that monitors are continuing their investigations in Taldou to try and uncover the truth about what the Security Council has called an "appalling and brutal crime".

More killings and ultimatum deepen Syria conflict
Tue, May 29 2012

Assad meets U.N. envoy Annan on heels of massacre

By Dominic Evans

BEIRUT | Wed May 30, 2012 8:37pm BST
(Reuters) - Syrian rebels on Wednesday gave President Bashar al-Assad a 48-hour deadline to comply with an international peace plan otherwise they would renew their battle to overthrow him.

The ultimatum was issued after U.N. observers reported the discovery of 13 bodies bound and shot in eastern Syria, adding to the world outcry over the massacre last week of 108 men, women and children.

The latest developments emphasised how the peace plan drafted by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has failed to stem 14 months of bloodshed or bring the Syrian government and opposition to the negotiating table.

Colonel Qassim Saadeddine of the rebel Free Syrian Army said its leadership had set a deadline of 0900 GMT Friday for Assad to implement the peace plan, which includes a ceasefire, deployment of observers, and free access for humanitarian aid and journalists.

If it fails to do so "we are free from any commitment and we will defend and protect the civilians, their villages and their cities," Saadeddine said in a statement posted on social media.

Both sides in the conflict have violated a tenuous ceasefire over the past two months but Assad's forces have been by far the worst offender, according to U.N. monitors.

Outrage at last Friday's massacre in the town of Houla, led a host of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats on Tuesday and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.

Major-General Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of the observer mission, said the 13 corpses found on Wednesday in Assukar, about 50 km (30 miles) east of Deir al-Zor, had their hands tied behind their backs. Some had been shot in the head from close range.

Mood called the latest killings an "appalling and inexcusable act" and appealed to all factions to end the cycle of violence.

He did not apportion any blame but Syrian activists said the victims were army defectors killed by Assad's forces.

Video footage posted by activists showed the bodies face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, with dark pools of blood around their heads and torsos.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said in New York on Tuesday that the Syrian army and "shabbiha" militiamen supporting Assad were probably responsible for killing the 108 people in Houla with artillery and tank fire, guns and knives.

The government denied any responsibility and blamed Islamist "terrorists" - its term for rebel forces.

The uprising began last March with street protests against Assad, who succeeded his late, authoritarian father Hafez al-Assad 11 years ago to perpetuate the family dynasty.

While initially a pro-democracy movement, the struggle has grown into an armed struggle increasingly involving sectarian rivalries pitting the Sunni Muslim majority against the Alawite sect, to which the Assad clan belongs.

Assad's forces have killed 7,500 people since it began, according to a U.N. toll. The government, which says the unrest is the work of foreign-backed terrorists, says more than 2,600 soldiers or security agents have been killed.

PEACE PLAN

Annan, trying to save his peace plan from collapse, told Assad in Damascus on Tuesday that Syria was at a tipping point.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 100 people were killed the same day. Syria's state news agency said pumping had been halted to an oil pipeline in eastern Syria after a bomb attack on Wednesday.

Diplomats said the U.N. Human Rights Council would meet in Geneva on Friday to consider the Houla massacre, the fourth time Syria has faced such scrutiny since the anti-Assad revolt broke out in March 2011.

Assad has so far proved impervious to international scolding and Western sanctions for his crackdown and has failed to return troops and tanks to barracks, as required by the Annan plan.

However, the U.N. observers sent in to monitor a notional ceasefire were able to verify the horrors in Houla, which produced a wave of world revulsion.

Assad's heavyweight international allies, China and Russia, stuck to their rejection of any intervention or U.N.-backed penalties to force him to change course.

Asked if Western and Arab countries were pressing Moscow to change its position, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday: "Russia is a country with a consistent foreign policy and any pressure is hardly appropriate."

The West is itself averse to military intervention, although French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday this could change if the U.N. Security Council backed it. But that is not possible unless veto-wielding members Russia and China allow it.

KICKED OUT

Turkey joined other countries including the United States, Britain, France and Germany in expelling Syrian diplomats in protest at the Houla massacre, saying unspecified international measures would follow if crimes against humanity continued.

Stung by the expulsions, Syria told the Dutch chargee d'affaires to leave. She was one of the few senior Western diplomats left in Damascus.

Despite the diplomatic deadlock, Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general and Nobel peace laureate, is pressing on with his mission.

"It is important to find a solution that will lead to a democratic transition in Syria and find a way of ending the killings as soon as possible," he said after talks in Jordan on Wednesday. "With goodwill and hard work, we can succeed."

It is hard to see where a breakthrough might come from.

China reiterated that it opposed military intervention and did not support a forced change of government.

Russia also reasserted its hostility to military action or to any further Security Council measures beyond a non-binding statement condemning the Houla killings.

"We believe consideration in the Security Council of any new measures to influence the situation now would be premature," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said.

Russia and China have twice vetoed Western-backed Council resolutions condemning the crackdown.

In New York, Annan's deputy Jean-Marie Guehenno told the Security Council that direct engagement between government and opposition was "impossible at the moment".

He also expressed serious doubt over the Syrian government's commitment to the Annan plan, a diplomat with knowledge of the closed session said.

(Writing by Alistair Lyon and Kevin Liffey; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syria accused of new massacre as U.N. council meets

By Mariam Karouny and Erika Solomon
BEIRUT | Thu Jun 7, 2012 2:41am EDT
(Reuters) - Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad stood accused by opponents on Thursday of a new massacre of scores of villagers hours before a divided U.N. Security Council convenes to review the crisis.

If confirmed, the killings of at least 78 people at Mazraat al-Qabeer, near Hama, will pile pressure on world powers to act, but there is little sign they can overcome a paralysis born of sharp divisions between Western and Arab states on the one hand and Assad's defenders in Russia, China and Iran on the other.

Several activists who monitor the 15-month-old revolt gave accounts to Reuters that women and children were among the dead when the village in central Syria came under artillery bombardment before fighters moved in on the ground and shot and stabbed dozens of people to death.

Echoing descriptions of a massacre of 108 civilians at Houla on May 25, which Western powers blame on Assad's troops and loyalist "shabbiha" militia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "shabbiha headed into the area after the shelling and killed dozens of citizens, among them women and children".

Some activists said at least 40 of the dead were women and children.

The Syrian state news agency quoted an official source in Hama describing reports from Mazraat al-Qabeer as "completely false", saying security forces had intervened at the request of residents after a "terrorist group committed ... a monstrous crime", killing nine women and children.

Syrian authorities have also denied responsibility for the Houla killings, blaming foreign-backed Islamist militants.

Shabbiha, drawn mostly from Assad's minority Alawite sect that is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, have been blamed for the killings of civilians from the Sunni Muslim majority. That has raised fears of an Iraq-style sectarian bloodbath and reinforced a wider regional confrontation between Shi'ite Iran and the mainly Sunni-led Arab states of the Middle East.

The main Syrian National Council opposition group responded to reports of the new massacre by calling for stepped-up military assaults on Assad's forces.

CEASEFIRE MONITORS

The failure of a ceasefire brokered by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan in March to halt the bloodshed has raised questions about its continued worth. Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, is to brief the Security Council later on Thursday in New York.

A 300-member group of U.N. truce observers has been in Syria for weeks and can be expected to investigate the accounts from Mazraat al-Qabeer, which came in under nightfall in Syria.

Events in Syria are difficult to verify as state authorities tightly restrict access for international media.

Activists, including the Observatory based in Britain, called for an immediate investigation. "The Syrian Observatory for Human rights calls on the international monitors to go immediately to the area. They should not wait to tomorrow to investigate this new massacre," it said in a statement.

"They should not give the excuse that their mission is only to observe the ceasefire, because many massacres have been committed during their presence in Syria."

U.N. diplomats said they expected Annan to present the Security Council with a new proposal to rescue his failing peace plan - a "contact group" of world and regional powers.

Rebel groups inside Syria, which helped escalate what began as popular demonstrations for democracy into what is approaching a civil war, say they are no longer bound by Annan's ceasefire and are calling for more foreign arms and other support.

Western leaders, wary of new military engagements in the Muslim world and especially of the explosively complex ethnic and religious mix that Syria represents, have offered sympathy but show no appetite for taking on Assad's redoubtable armed forces, which can call on Iran and Russia for supplies.

In Washington on Wednesday, the United States and Saudi Arabia, among dozens of mostly Western and Arab countries in the Friends of Syria working group, called for further economic sanctions against Syria including an arms embargo, travel bans and tougher financial penalties.

ISTANBUL MEETING

Separately, ministers and envoys from 15 countries and the European Union agreed at a meeting hosted by Turkey in Istanbul on Wednesday to convene a "coordination group" to provide support to the opposition but left unclear what this may entail.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among officials from Europe, Turkey and Arab states who discussed "additional steps" including coordination on an "effective and credible transition process" to lead to a "democratic, post-Assad Syria," a Turkish statement said. It added that the group would be represented at a meeting in Istanbul next week of Syrian rebels.

Clinton told the group that transition in Syria must include a full representative interim government that would pave the way for a full transfer of power in free and fair elections.

Annan hopes his new idea can prevent a total collapse of his plan for a truce and negotiated political solution, U.N. diplomats said. The core of the proposal, diplomats said, would be the establishment of a contact group that would bring together Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and key regional players with influence on Syria's government or the opposition, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

By creating such a contact group, envoys said, Annan would also be trying to break the deadlock among the five permanent council members that has pitted veto-wielding powers Russia and China against the United States, Britain and France and prevented any meaningful U.N. action on the Syrian conflict.

It would attempt to map out a "political transition" for Syria that would lead to Assad stepping aside and the holding of free elections, envoys said. One envoy said the idea was "vaguely similar" to a political transition deal for Yemen that led to the president's ouster after a year of mass protests.

The main point of Annan's proposal, they said, was to get Russia to commit to the idea of a Syrian political transition, which remains the thrust of Annan's six-point peace plan that both the Syrian government and opposition said they accepted earlier this year, but have failed to implement.

'LIFE SUPPORT'

While Russia has said repeatedly it is not protecting Assad, it has given no indication it is ready to abandon him. Assad has proven to be a staunch Russian ally and remains a top purchaser of weapons from Russian firms, and diplomats say Moscow continues to reward him for his loyalty.

"The thought is one that we've had for a little while, which is that you need to bind Russia into some sort of transition strategy on Syria," a senior Western diplomat said.

An unnamed diplomat leaked further details of Annan's proposal to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who said that if the contact group agreed on a transition deal for Syria, it would mean "Assad would presumably depart for Russia, which is said to have offered him exile".

It was not immediately clear if the idea of Russian exile for Assad was something Annan was pushing or if it was Ignatius' speculation. The Post article said that another option for Assad would be to seek exile in Iran, Damascus' other staunch ally.

In what could be the first step toward the creation of Annan's contact group, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday floated the idea of an international meeting on the Syrian crisis that would bring together the prime candidates for Annan's proposed contact group, including Iran.

Clinton, however, reacted coolly to including Iran, which she said was "stage-managing" the Syrian government assault on the opposition that the United Nations says killed at least 10,000 people.

Before he addresses the Security Council, Annan will speak to the 193-nation General Assembly, along with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.

Separately, envoys said it was unclear if the council would agree to extend the 90-day mandate of the unarmed U.N. observer mission in Syria, which is increasingly at risk of attack. Its mandate expires in late July.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syria: Smell Of Death At 'Massacre' Village
By Tim Marshall, foreign affairs editor, in Mazraat al Qubeir | Sky News

After more than two days, a United Nations convoy has managed to reach the Syrian hamlet where an alleged massacre took place.
Opposition activists say 78 people were murdered in Mazraat al Qubeir - and although these claims have not been verified, it is clear that something ghastly has taken place.
The village is in a terrible state - there are charred, burnt-out buildings covered in bullet holes and dead animals in the street.
In one house, we found blood splashed up against the walls, amid blood-soaked blankets and children's clothes and toys.
In another, there was unidentifiable carbonised debris - which locals claim are human remains.
The hamlet is uninhabitable now.
The smell of death lingers, although it is not clear if this is from animals or people.
Those villagers brave enough to speak to us were desperate to tell their stories - but also not to be identified.
One man told me the army shelled the buildings before pro-government militia went house-to-house and killed dozens of people, including children.
Others said the army made them remove the dead from buildings and bury them, although this cannot be proved.
The Syrian government denies any involvement in the crime.
The UN's monitors fanned out across the hamlet, gathering evidence.
Their technical experts studied the charred remains in an attempt to identify whether or not they are human.
Human rights experts spoke to eyewitnesses about the exact times and names of people supposedly killed.
All of this will go into the monitors' report, although it is likely to be inconclusive.
The length of time since the alleged massacre took place has provided ample time for any evidence to be cleared away.
And, for every eyewitness that blames the pro-government militia, there is another accusing rebel forces.
As for hard proof of what happened in this hamlet on Wednesday, I do not think we will ever get it.

Rose wrote:Shocking!

bb1 wrote:I don't like him much either, LL, his political views are none too appetising. He is also an elitist snob.