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* Russia says “tragic” events deserve condemnation
* Syria’s gov’t denies involvement in Houla slaughter
* Activists say shelling and pro-Assad militia to blame
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Louis Charbonneau
AMMAN/UNITED NATIONS, May 27 (Reuters) – The U.N. Security
Council met on Sunday to discuss the killing of at least 108
people in the Syrian town of Houla, a sign of mounting outrage
at the massacre that the government and rebels blamed on each
other.
Images of bloodied and lifeless young bodies, lain carefully
side by side after the onslaught on Friday, triggered shock
around the world and underlined the failure of a six-week-old
U.N. ceasefire plan to stop the violence.
Western and Arab states opposed to Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad put the blame for the deaths squarely on the
government.
Russia, which along with China, has vetoed Security Council
resolutions calling for tougher action, said the “tragic” events
in Syria deserve condemnation and called for a U.N. assessment
of the violence there.
Russian Deputy U.N. Ambassador Alexander Pankin told
reporters Moscow was skeptical about suggestions that the Syrian
government was behind the massacre, saying it appeared most of
the victims were killed with knives or shot at point-blank
range.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant disagreed.
“It seems quite clear that the massacre in Houla was caused
by heavy bombardment, by government artillery and tanks,” Lyall
Grant said.
The United Nations believes that at least 108 people were
killed, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous.
Moscow rejected a British and French proposal for a Security
Council statement on the Houla massacre on Saturday, demanding a
briefing from the head of the U.N. observer mission, General
Robert Mood, first.
Security Council diplomats said on Sunday they hoped to
agree on some kind of condemnation of the massacre, though
Russia was clearly at odds with the Western powers regarding who
was to blame.
In his public comments so far, Mood called the killings “a
very tragical expression” of the situation in Syria, but
refrained from apportioning blame.
“For myself, I have had patrols on the ground all the day
yesterday afternoon and today we are gathering facts on the
ground and then we will draw our own conclusions,” Mood told the
BBC in a telephone interview on Sunday.
“The sight like the one that now has been played out in
Houla, it hits the stomach, it’s really an attack on the future
of the Syrian people. There are still those in Syria who believe
the use of violence and quite deplorable use of violence serves
their own self-interest,” Mood said.
The U.N. observers confirmed the use of artillery, which
only Assad’s forces have, but did not say how all the victims
died.
Syrian authorities blamed “terrorists” for the massacre,
among the worst carnage in the 14-month-old uprising against
Assad, which has cost about 10,000 lives.
“Women, children and old men were shot dead. This is not the
hallmark of the heroic Syrian army,” Foreign Ministry spokesman
Jihad Makdesi told reporters in Damascus.
“HERDING US LIKE SHEEP”
But U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, and
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused the Syrian government
of using artillery in populated areas.
“This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate
and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of
international law and of the commitments of the Syrian
Government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population
centres and violence in all its forms,” they said in a joint
statement on Saturday.
Annan’s views and the briefing by Mood are likely to be very
influential at the Security Council.
Opposition activists said Assad’s forces shelled Houla after
a protest and then clashed with fighters from the Sunni
Muslim-led insurgency.
Activists say Assad’s “shabbiha” militia, loyal to an
establishment dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect,
then hacked dozens of the victims to death, or shot them.
Maysara al-Hilawi said he saw the bodies of six children and
their parents in a ransacked house in the town.
“The Abdelrazzak family house was the first one I entered.
The children’s corpses were piled on top of each other, either
with their throats cut or shot at close range,” Hilawi, an
opposition activist, said by telephone from the area.
A video distributed by activists showed an injured woman,
who said she had survived the massacre, blaming shabbiha
militiamen for the carnage.
“They entered our homes … men wearing fatigues herding us
like sheep in the room and started spraying bullets at us,” the
woman said. “My father died and my brother, my mother’s only
son. Seven sisters were killed,” the woman said lying next to
another injured woman and near a baby with a chest wound.
The White House said it was horrified by credible reports of
brutal attacks on women and children in Houla.
“These acts serve as a vile testament to an illegitimate
regime that responds to peaceful political protest with
unspeakable and inhuman brutality,” a White House spokesman
said.
The Gulf Cooperation Council of Sunni-led monarchies accused
Assad’s soldiers of using excessive force and urged the
international community to “assume its responsibilities to halt
the daily bloodshed in Syria.”
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton spoke of a “heinous
act perpetrated by the Syrian regime against its own civilian
population” in a statement on Sunday. The head of the European
parliament said it could amount to a war crime.
On Sunday, at least 30 people were killed when Syrian army
tanks shelled residential neighbourhoods in the city of Hama
that have been serving as bases for rebel attacks against
loyalist forces, opposition activists said. The reports could
not be verified independently.
Although the ceasefire plan negotiated by Annan has failed
to stop the violence, the United Nations is nearing full
deployment of a 300-strong unarmed observer force meant to
monitor a truce.
The plan calls for a truce, withdrawal of troops from cities
and dialogue between government and opposition.
Syria calls the revolt a “terrorist” conspiracy run from
abroad, a veiled reference to Sunni Muslim Gulf powers that want
to see weapons provided to the insurgents.
The United Nations has accused Assad’s forces and insurgents
alike of grave human rights abuses, including summary executions
and torture.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington, Suleiman
Al-Khalidi in Amman, Avril Ormsby in London and Dubai Bureau;
Writing by Matthew Tostevin and Jon Hemming; Editing by Louise
Ireland and Eric Beech)
