West gives boot to Syria envoys

Eyewitnesses blame Assad in killing of women, children

A Syrian woman sits with her grandson at a partially built house in eastern Lebanon after fleeing her hometown of Homs with other family members.
A Syrian woman sits with her grandson at a partially built house in eastern Lebanon after fleeing her hometown of Homs with other family members.

— Eyewitness accounts from the Syrian massacre emerged Tuesday, describing shadowy gunmen who slaughtered whole families in their homes and targeted the most vulnerable in poor farming villages.

Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats in a coordinated move against President Bashar Assad’s regime over the killing of more than 100 people.

U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan met with Assad in Damascus to try to salvage what is left of a peace plan, which since being brokered six weeks ago has failed to stop any of the violence on the ground.

Survivors of the Houla massacre blamed pro-regime gunmen for at least some of the carnage as the killings reverberated inside Syria and beyond, further isolating Assad.

“It’s very hard for me to describe what I saw, the im- ages were incredibly disturbing,” said a Houla resident who hid in his home during the massacre. “Women, children without heads, their brains or stomachs spilling out.”

He said that the pro-regime gunmen, known as shabiha, targeted the most vulnerable in the farming villages that make up Houla, a poor area in Homs province. “They went after the women, children and elderly,” he said, asking that his name not be published for of fear of reprisals.

Assad’s government often deploys militias that provide muscle for the regime and carry out military-style attacks. They frequently work closely with soldiers and security forces, but the regime never acknowledges their existence, allowing it to deny responsibility for their actions.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said there are strong suspicions that pro-Assad fighters were responsible for some of the killings, adding that he has seen no reason to believe that “third elements” — or outside forces — were involved, although he did not rule it out.

The Syrian regime has denied any role in the massacre, blaming the killings on “armed terrorists” who attacked army positions in the area and slaughtered innocent civilians. It has provided no evidence to support its narrative nor has it given a death toll.

After his meeting with Assad, Annan called on the government and “all government-backed militias” to stop military operations and show maximum restraint. He also called on the armed opposition to stop all violence.

“We are at a tipping point,” Annan told reporters in Damascus. “The Syrian people do not want the future to be one of bloodshed and division.”

The Obama administration gave Syria’s most senior envoy in Washington, the charge d’affaires at the Syrian Embassy, 72 hours to leave the United States. Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria also expelled Syrian diplomats.

“We hold the Syrian government responsible for this slaughter of innocent lives,” State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said in Washington. “This massacre is the most unambiguous indictment to date of the Syrian government’s flagrant violations of its U.N. Security Council obligations.”

The Syrian crisis began in March 2011 with peaceful protests inspired by a wave of uprisings that swept the Arab world.

According to witnesses, the massacre, which began late Friday in an area about 25 miles northwest of the city of Homs, had dangerous sectarian overtones.

The victims lived in Sunni Muslim villages in the Houla area. But the shabiha forces purportedly behind many of the killings came from an arc of nearby villages populated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Most shabiha fighters belong to the Alawite sect, to which the Assad family and the ruling elite also belong. This ensures the gunmen’s loyalty to the regime, built on fears they will be persecuted if the Sunni majority gains the upper hand.

Sunnis make up most of Syria’s 22 million population as well as the backbone of the opposition.

Activists say as many as 13,000 people have been killed in the uprising. The U.N. put the toll at 9,000 as of March, but many hundreds more have died since.

On Tuesday, the U.N.’s human-rights office said most of the 108 victims of the Houla massacre were shot at close range. The U.N. report indicated that most of the dead were killed execution-style, with fewer than 20 people cut down by regime shelling.

Deaths from heavy artillery can be blamed on regime forces with relative confidence because rebel fighters do not have such weapons. But it is more difficult to determine who is behind the close-range killings because Syria sharply restricts media access.

Still, the U.N. cited survivors and witnesses blaming the house-to-house killings on shabiha. Witnesses also said that shabiha were behind the attacks.

“What is very clear is this was an absolutely abominable event that took place in Houla, and at least a substantial part of it was summary executions of civilians, women and children,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“At this point, it looks like entire families were shot in their houses,” he said.

It is not clear what touched off the convulsion of violence. Houla activists reached by Skype said government troops shelled the area after anti-government protests Friday and clashed with local rebels. Later, shabiha from nearby villages reportedly swept through the area, stabbing residents and shooting them at close range.

Videos posted online by anti-regime activists show explosions in Houla and dismembered bodies in the streets, then row upon row of the dead laid out before being buried in a mass grave. Some videos showed dozens of dead children, some with gaping wounds.

According to SANA, the state-run news agency, Assad blamed terrorists and weapons smugglers for scuttling the peace plan, which called for a cease-fire and dialogue with the opposition. The regime denies there is any popular will behind the country’s uprising, saying foreign extremists and terrorists are driving the unrest.

Russia has provided a key layer of protection for the Syrian government in the uprising. Russia and China have used their veto power to block U.N. resolutions against Assad. But Russia has grown increasingly critical of Damascus in recent months, and the Houla massacre has prompted some of the strongest condemnations yet from Moscow.

Despite some shift in Russia’s stance recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday the Houla massacre must not be a pretext to push for military intervention from outside. Instead, he urged all sides to focus on the Annan plan.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration remains opposed to military action, reasoning that it would lead only to more carnage. The U.S. will continue offering non-lethal assistance to the Syrian people, he said, and Tuesday’s coordinated move to expel Syrian diplomats was a signal of the international community’s “absolute disgust” with Assad’s rule.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for more “assertive measures” against Assad, including arming the Syrian opposition. The Obama administration has declined to help arm the opposition.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for the Egyptian presidential runoff next month, Mohammed Morsi, promised Tuesday he would break sharply with the ways of ousted ruler Hosni Mubarak, a day after angry protesters burned down the headquarters of Ahmed Shafiq, his challenger, who served as prime minister in the old regime.

In Yemen, the army pressed an offensive Tuesday against southern towns held by al-Qaida-linked fighters, with 11 militants and five soldiers killed in the clashes, military officials said.

Information for this article was contributed by Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Zeina Karam, Ben Hubbard, Angela Charlton, Frank Jordans, Edith M. Lederer, Albert Aji, Selcan Hacaoglu, Hamza Hendawi and Ahmed al-Haj of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/30/2012

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