[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, during the day, opposition groups said, with soldiers and
pro-government fighters storming the village and killing families in their
homes late at night. Included in the death toll, which rose Sunday afternoon,
were at least 32 children.]
By Neil MacFarquhar
 |
Shaam News Network, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The bodies of a man and a girl, who villagers said were
among those
killed by government security forces on Friday, were placed
on the vehicle
of United Nations observers upon their arrival
in Houla on Saturday
|
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United Nations Security Council on Sunday unanimously
condemned the Syrian government for its role in the massacre of at least 108
people in Houla over the weekend, even as Syria blamed others
for the killing.
The United Nations
action was the strongest yet allowed by Russia, a permanent Security Council
member who has blocked many attempts to criticize the government of President
Bashar al-Assad, its close ally.
“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
Damascus, the capital. 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, during the day, opposition groups said, with soldiers and
pro-government fighters storming the village and killing families in their
homes late at night. Included in the death toll, which rose Sunday afternoon,
were at least 32 children.
At a United Nations
Security Council meeting, Russia initially blocked a collective statement condemning
the Syrian government, diplomats said Sunday, and demanded a closed
briefing from Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the United Nations observer
mission, on assigning blame.
Four council members —
the United States, Germany, France and Britain — had prepared a draft statement
condemning the Syrian military for battering civilian neighborhoods with tank
shells, using language that echoed two previous United Nations statements. The
secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon issued a joint statement with Kofi Annan, his
envoy. Mr. Annan is scheduled to be in the Syrian capital for talks on Monday.
But Russia said it
wanted to hear directly from General Mood because the question of who might
have carried out the massacre was not clear, the diplomats said. “It seems they
want to deflect criticism from the Syrian authorities,” said one Security
Council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic
sensitivities involved. It sought at least a hint that “third parties” were
involved, echoing the Syrian government line that Al Qaeda is heavily involved
in the uprising, a position the opposition rejects.
Amateur videos from
Syria that were said to be taken after the attack showed row after row of victims, many of them
children with what appeared to be bullet holes in their temples. Other videos
showed gruesome shrapnel wounds caused by what activists said was a barrage of
shelling that started Friday in response to demonstrations after the weekly
prayer service and that continued Saturday.
Mr. 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 antitank 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, Mr. Makdissi seemed to avoid the thrust of the accusations
made by the United Nations that the government had indiscriminately shelled
civilian neighborhoods.
After monitors visited
the village on Saturday, counting at least 92 bodies, they said they found
spent tank shells, which they cited as evidence that the Syrian military had
violated its part of a truce in firing heavy artillery at civilians.
International officials
largely blamed the government. Mr. Makdissi said that Syrian forces would not
fire on civilians. Yet they have had a history of doing so throughout the
uprising.
Mr. Makdissi said a
judicial military committee had been set up to investigate and report back in
three days. He noted that Mr. Annan was due in Damascus for talks on Monday.
Arab League officials in Cairo told The Associated Press, however, that the
Syrians had barred Mr. Annan’s deputy, Nasser al-Qidwa, a former Palestinian foreign
minister.
Kuwait, which holds the
Arab League presidency, has called for an emergency meeting of its foreign
ministers to discuss the attack. Syrian ties with the league were strained last
year after its membership was suspended. In addition, Mr. Qidwa is the nephew
of Yasir Arafat, the former Palestinian leader who died in 2004 and with whom
Damascus was often at odds.
There was widespread
international condemnation of the massacre. The British government said Sunday that
Syria’s chargé d’affaires had been called to a meeting on Monday with the Foreign
Office so that London could stress its condemnation of the episode. A White
House official called the attack “a vile testament to an illegitimate regime
that responds to peaceful political protest with unspeakable and inhuman
brutality.”
Gory images posted
online — particularly the scene of rows of dead children smeared with blood —
prompted an emotional outpouring of antigovernment demonstrations across Syria
and calls for sectarian revenge.
Activists said that much
of the slaughter had been carried out by pro-government thugs, or “shabiha,”
from the area. Houla is a Sunni Muslim town, while three villages around it are
mostly Alawite, the religion of Mr. Assad and whose adherents are the core of
his security forces. A fourth village is Shiite Muslim.
A man in a black knitted
mask who appeared on one YouTube video, for example, said it was time “to
prepare for vengeance against this awful sectarian regime.”
The rebel Free Syrian
Army, the loose federation of armed militias across the country, issued a
statement saying it was no longer committed to the United Nations truce because
the plan was merely buying time for the government to kill civilians and
destroy cities and villages.
“We won’t allow truce
after truce, which prolongs the crisis for years,” the statement said.
The Syrian government
blamed “terrorists,” its catchall phrase for the opposition, for killing the
civilians.
State television
repeatedly broadcast pictures of members of one household who had been
massacred, calling the deaths “part of the ugly crimes that the terrorists are
committing against the Syrians with the financial support of some Arab states
and others.”
SANA, the state-run news
agency, said that “armed terrorist groups attacked law-enforcement forces and
civilians” in the nearby town of Teldo, which prompted security forces to
“intervene and engage the terrorists.”
But the direct
accusation from the United Nations, which is monitoring the tattered April 12
cease-fire, rebutted the government’s standard claim that outsiders or their
domestic dupes are to blame.
Syria sharply limits
access to the country for foreign correspondents, making independent
verification of events there difficult. But there has been a pattern of similar
government assaults in recent months against villages sympathetic to the
opposition.
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.”
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.
The British foreign
secretary, William Hague, said Britain was looking for a strong international
response and hoped to convene an “urgent” session of the United Nations
Security Council “in the coming days.”
The Syrian National
Council, the umbrella opposition organization in exile, condemned the killing
and called for three days of mourning.
An employee of The New York Times contributed
reporting from Damascus, Syria, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, and Ellen Barry from
Moscow.