DAMASCUS, June 9 (AFP) UN monitors finally reached the site of a massacre of villagers in Syria on their second attempt, to be confronted by blood on the walls and "a strong stench of burnt flesh," a spokesman said, as Western powers pressed for sanctions against Damascus.
The sanctions push came as international envoy Kofi Annan called for "additional pressure" in the wake of the latest massacre as he went into talks in Washington with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
While the government has denied responsibility, UN spokesmanMartin Nesirky said the observers saw armored vehicle tracks and homes that were damaged by rockets, grenades and various weapons.
"Inside some of the houses, blood was visible across the walls and floors. Fire was still burning outside houses and there was a strong stench of burnt flesh," the spokesman said in a grim account of the visit.
Nesirky told reporters in New York the observers managed to reach Al-Kubeir, a day after they were shot at when they tried to enter the village.
"We are not in a position to give further details until the teams have returned with their findings."
Activist Abdel Karim al-Hamwi told AFP in Beirut "the observers first headed to the village of Maarzaf where the victims were buried and then to Al-Kubeir to survey the damage from army shelling."
At least 55 people were killed on Wednesday in an assault on Al-Kubeir, a Sunni farming enclave of some 150 people circled by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Paul Danahar, a BBC correspondent travelling with the UN convoy, reported seeing gutted buildings in Al-Kubeir and no sign of life or bodies. "The stench of burnt flesh is still strong," he wrote on Twitter, and quoted activists as saying government forces had removed victims' bodies on Thursday while the observers were being hindered from reaching the village.
"In front of me there is a piece of brain, in the corner there is a mass of congealed blood," he wrote. "In front of a burnt out building is carcass of a donkey inside the buildings are gutted. The UN have not found any people yet.
"Who ever did this may have acted with mindless violence but attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated & clear." According to preliminary evidence, troops had surrounded Al-Kubeir and militia entered the village and killed civilians with "barbarity," UN chief Ban Ki-moon told the UN Security Council.
Damascus denied responsibility and, as it has done repeatedly in the past, blamed foreign-backed "terrorists," using its term for rebels fighters.
In fresh violence on Friday, troops battled to take back the rebel bastion of Khaldiyeh in the central city of Homs, bombarding it "at a rate of five shells a minute," said the Observatory. Elsewhere, an explosion in front of a police station in the northwestern city of Idlib killed five people, including two security forces members, said the watchdog. In all, at least 26 people were killed on Friday, mostly civilians but also including two more members of the security forces who died in a blast in the Damascus suburb of Qudssaya, the watchdog said.
Activists called for protests after weekly Friday prayers under the rallying cry, "Revolutionaries and traders, hand in hand until victory." |
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