BEIRUT — The Syrian government Sunday rejected claims that it had carried out a massacre that killed more than 100 villagers, including dozens of children, and the United Nations Security Council met in the afternoon to discuss the killings, which its top officials have sharply denounced.
“We unequivocally deny the responsibility of government forces for the massacre,” Jihad Makdissi, the spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference in Syria’s capital, Damascus. He reiterated the standard government line that the deaths were caused by a terrorist attack, and he said he regretted that the United Nations and other governments seemed to have accepted the opposition’s version of events.
In some of the worst carnage since the uprising began 15 months ago, Syrian tanks and artillery pounded Houla, a rebel-controlled village near Homs, a center of the resistance, on Friday and Saturday, opposition groups said, with soldiers and pro-government fighters storming the village and killing families in their homes late at night.
Makdissi said the army did not send tanks into Houla and that security forces did not leave their positions but had remained in a defensive posture. Instead, he said, hundreds of gunmen armed with machine guns, mortars and anti-tank missiles began attacking government positions in a skirmish that lasted much of the day and well into the night. Three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded, he said.
In saying that tanks did not enter Houla, Makdissi seemed to avoid the thrust of the accusations made by the United Nations that the government had indiscriminately shelled civilian neighborhoods.
Makdissi said a judicial military committee had been set up to investigate and report back in three days.
DEATH TOLL PUT AT 108
The U.N. Security Council said in a statement after its private meeting that the “outrageous use of force” against civilians violated international law and Syrian government commitments under previous U.N. resolutions to stop all violence, including the use of heavy weapons in populated areas. It said “those responsible for acts of violence must be held accountable.”
It demanded that the Syrian government immediately halt the use of heavy weapons and pull its troops out of cities and towns, and it asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the U.N. observer mission in Syria to continue investigating the attacks in Houla.
Britain and France had proposed issuing a press statement condemning the attack on civilians and pointing the finger at the Syrian government for Friday’s massacre. But Russia called for an emergency council meeting saying it first wanted a briefing by Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the unarmed U.N. observer mission.
Russia, which considers Syria its closest Mideast ally, has used its Security Council veto power to block resolutions raising the possibility of U.N. action against President Bashar Assad. The assault on Houla was one of the bloodiest single events in the 15-month uprising against Assad’s regime.
Mood told the private council session that U.N. observers, after revisiting the scene, had raised the death toll in Houla to 108 people, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said outside the council chamber. Those killed include 49 children and 34 women, Ahmad Fawzi, a spokesman for international envoy Kofi Annan, told the AP. Mood said Saturday that observers confirmed from an examination of ordnance found at the scene that artillery and tank shells were fired.
Before the meeting, Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Alexander Pankin had questioned whether Syrian tanks and artillery were responsible for the killings. He told reporters “there is substantial ground to believe that the majority of those who were killed were either slashed, cut by knives, or executed at point-blank distance.”
A press statement is weaker than a presidential statement, which becomes part of the council record, or a legally binding U.N. resolution, but it must be approved by all 15 members and therefore reflects Security Council backing.
WORLD CONDEMNS KILLINGS
International anger over the attacks was widespread Sunday.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he would summon Syria’s most senior diplomat in the U.K. on Monday so the Foreign Office could “make clear our condemnation of the Syrian regime’s actions.”
Kuwait, which currently heads the 22-member Arab League, called for an Arab ministerial meeting to “take steps to put an end to the oppressive practices against the Syrian people.”
Switzerland’s Foreign Ministry urged that an international inquiry be convened, saying the killings “could constitute a war crime.”
In Paris, the head of the exile Syrian National Council also condemned the killings.
“The kids of Houla are the kids of all of Syria,” Burhan Ghalioun told reporters. “Killing the kids of Houla is like killing the kids of all of Syria.”
Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, issued a statement accusing Syria’s government of committing “new massacres” and added that France would organize a meeting of the roughly 80-member Friends of Syria group as soon as possible.
CAN’T COUNT ON RUSSIA
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton focused on what she described as the “vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighborhood.”
“Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account,” she said in a statement. “And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the U.S. can’t count on Russia - a major arms supplier to Syria - to force Assad from power.
He said President Barack Obama’s “administration has a feckless foreign policy which abandons American leadership,” McCain told Fox News Sunday.
“What the conclusion you can draw is that this president wants to kick the can down the road on all of these issues until after the election. ... It’s really an abdication of everything that America stands for and believes in,” he later added.
Mitt Romney, Obama’s presumed rival in this year’s presidential election, said Obama “can no longer ignore calls from congressional leaders in both parties to take more assertive steps.” He said the current approach has only given Assad more time to crack down on protesters.
“The United States should work with partners to organize and arm Syrian opposition groups so they can defend themselves,” Romney said.
OBSERVERS IN HOULA
A video released by the U.N. team in Syria on Sunday showed observers in Houla the day after the attack, meeting with local rebels and watching residents collect more bodies for burial. It also showed two destroyed armored personnel carriers - suggesting that local rebels put up more of a fight than the activists acknowledged.
Annan’s peace plan for Syria, sponsored by the U.N. and the Arab League, is one of the few points of agreement among world powers about Syria’s crisis, which began in March 2011 with protests calling for political change. As the government violently cracked down on the uprising, many in the opposition took up arms to defend themselves and attack government troops.
The U.N. put the death toll weeks ago at more than 9,000. Hundreds more have been killed since then.
Activists reported shelling, gunfire and arrest raids in opposition areas throughout the country Sunday as well as clashes between regime forces and rebels in a number of areas. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed at least 14 civilians, while rebels killed nine soldiers.
In another development, Kuwait has called for an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers to discuss the Houla attack. Syrian ties with the league were strained last year after its membership was suspended.
Also Sunday, Syria denied permission for Annan’s deputy to travel to Damascus with his boss, a senior Arab League official said.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the rejection of former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser al-Kidwa was intended as a slap at the Arab League. In addition, al-Kidwa is the nephew of Yasser Arafat, the former Palestinian leader who died in 2004 and with whom Damascus was often at odds.
Information for this article was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times; and by Ben Hubbard, Edith M. Lederer, Adam Schreck, Hamza Hendawi, Anne Flaherty and Anne Gearan of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/28/2012