When the shelling and gunfire ended, more than 100 people in Houla had been killed, at least a third of them children, writes MARTIN CHULOV
AT NOON on Friday, they gathered for their familiar and increasingly futile weekly ritual – an act of peaceable defiance against the regime they loathe.
The chants resounded far and wide, audible to the army troops menacingly nearby and to the adjoining Allawite villages largely sympathetic to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
“The Allawites have been hearing our chants for many months,” said Houla resident Abu Jaffour. “And neither they, nor the army, have liked what we’ve been saying. Maybe that’s why they did what they did.”
Three hours later, vengeance rolled into town with a savagery rarely paralleled in the 15-month Syrian uprising. When the shelling and gunfire stopped early on Saturday, close to 100 people had been killed, at least one-third of them children. Some appeared to have been killed at close range as they cowered in barricaded homes.
In a few short hours, the town of Houla joined the sorry list of localities whose names have become synonymous with the merciless slaughter of civilians. Srebrenica. Nyarubuye. My Lai.
Up to now, the Syrian conflict has killed 13,000 people. But until this weekend, it had yet to include the mass slaughter of nursery-age infants.
“The shelling started around 3pm,” said Abu Jaffour. “I was in the fields at the time and we tried to reach the area being bombed. It took us three hours to get there. When I reached the houses it was dreadful. I was carrying babies’ bodies that had parts of their heads hanging out.”
A second Houla resident, Imm Mowafik, said that nightfall brought more brutality. “The Shabiha [pro-regime civilian militias] came into town from the direction of the Allawite villages.
“They entered from five to seven checkpoints and were killing people in their homes. We could hear the shots and nobody could help them.”
Abu Jaffour said: “We have buried around 110 martyrs and there are still some people under the rubble. Twenty-two of the children are nursery age.”
Last night, the UN security council convened an emergency session to discuss what the White House called a “vile testament to an illegitimate regime”.
The British foreign secretary, William Hague, will arrive in Moscow today to take up the matter with Assad’s closest security council ally, Russia. The UN special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, whose tattered peace plan remains in effect on paper alone, today heads for Damascus on an emergency mission to stop the crisis from unravelling even further.
“This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centres and violence in all its forms,” the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said before Annan’s visit.
Syria yesterday denied it was responsible, blaming al-Qaeda for the carnage – a refrain it repeats after all large bombings and shootings.
“Al-Qaeda hiding in the mountains?” asked Abu Jaffour. “They expect people to believe that? These mountain areas are the Allawite villages and Houla is full of the families of the Free Syrian Army.”
Like much of the rest of Homs province in central Syria, Houla had become a hub of armed opposition to the Assad regime, which is trying to repress the most sustained challenge to its four decades of rule.
Houla residents claim that 600 defectors are in Houla. If true, the small town of 35,000 residents would be a stronghold of the opposition militia, in the area now known as the heartland of the Syrian revolution.
The battle has become increasingly sectarian. Syria’s third city, Homs, and its surrounding hinterland is a patchwork of Allawite and Sunni enclaves and tensions between the sects have increasingly spilled over into violence.
Several observers say the violence in Homs has developed a clear pattern. “All of these areas that have been attacked like this are geographically and demographically close to Allawite areas,” said Wissam Tarif, the Arab world campaigner for the global rights group Avaaz.
“The common denominator in these areas is that they are close to Allawite communities. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the move. This is not just some angry guys who went and killed these families. This is a state policy, a regime policy, spreading sectarian tensions. People in Houla are going to retaliate.”
A third resident of Houla said that more than three-quarters of the population of the town was on the move, with many travelling to rural areas to escape fighting that was continuing last night.
“They are sleeping in their fields,” said Abu Wael. “Another 10,000 have moved into the homes of families in other parts of Houla.” – (Copyright: Guardian News Media 2012)