Video- Houla Eye Witnesses: Free Syrian Army Responsible for Massacre.The Syrian News blog has posted eye witness accounts of the massacre in the Syrian city of al-Houla on May 25.
According to a translation of a Russian video of the interviews, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) carried out the attacks and the victims were al-Assad loyalists and people who had demonstrated opposition to the armed opposition group.
According to the accounts, FSA gunmen entered the city located in the Homs countryside and after securing it began killing people.
“The attack was carried out by a unit of armed fighters from Rastan, in which more than 700 gunmen were involved,” writes Marat Musin, a journalist with ANNA News. “They brought the city under their control and began with a cleansing action against loyalist (pro-Assad) families, including elderly people, women and also children.”
The head of an inquiry committee into the massacre put the number of attackers closer to 800.
The dead were put on display for the United
Nations and the corporate media and portrayed as victims of al-Assad’s military,
according to the Syrian News blog report.
The United Nations, the U.S., and the European
Union have used the massacre to call for a new round of sanctions against
al-Assad in an effort to force his compliance with an international peace plan
that was recently rejected by
the FSA.
“Time is running short for that (plan) because
terrible crimes are being committed,” British Foreign Secretary William
Hague said on Thursday. “There is a great danger of a collapse into a
sectarian conflict more bitter and more widespread than we see today.”
Earlier today, we reported that U.S. Ambassador
Susan
Rice had emerged from a closed-door meeting of the United Nations Security
Council on Wednesday and said the Council and the United States are prepared to
attack the al-Assad government in Syria.
Russia and China are perceived by the West as
standing in the way of imposing more sanctions on Damascus. On Sunday, Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said any additional sanctions should
wait until an official investigation into the massacre that killed over a
hundred people has concluded.
Russia’s Permanent Representative at the UN Igor
Pankin questioned the allegations that Syrian armed forces are responsible for
the al-Houla massacre, according to SANA,
the Syrian Arab News Agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment