Syria Forces Attack Homs, UN Condemns 'Appalling Brutality'

A grieving relative kissing a dead man on the back of a truck at Homs

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Angus MacSwan
AMMAN/BEIRUT, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Syrian forces bombarded opposition-held neighbourhoods of the city of Homs with rocket and mortar fire on Thursday, activists said, as divided world powers struggled to find a way to end the violence.

The United Nations chief condemned the ferocity of the government assault on Homs, heart of a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad that broke out nearly a year ago and is getting bloodier by the day.

"I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighbourhoods, is a grim harbinger of things to come," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters after briefing the Security Council.

Activists and residents report hundreds of people killed over the last week as Assad's forces try stamp out opposition in Homs, and as dawn broke on Thursday, rocket and mortar fire rained down again on Baba Amro, Khalidiya and other districts. Armoured reinforcements also poured into the eastern city.

Concern was growing over the plight of civilians and the United States said it was considering ways to get food and medicine to them - a move that would deepen international involvement in a conflict which has wide geopolitical dimensions and has caused division between foreign powers.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said before flying to Washington for talks on Syria that Turkey, which once saw Assad as an ally but now wants him out, could no longer stand by and watch. Turkey wanted to host an international meeting to agree ways to end the killing and provide aid, he said.

"It is not enough being an observer," he told Reuters, though Russia and China have warned against "interference".

Foreign ministers of the Arab League, which the U.N.'s Ban said was planning to revive an observer mission it suspended last month because of the violence, are due to meet in Cairo on Sunday. They may want to hear other governments' ideas by then.

U.S. officials said they expected to meet soon with allies to discuss ways of helping Syrian civilians. And China, cool to Western lobbying for international involvement, nonetheless reported its first formal contact with the Syrian opposition.


HOMS UNDER FIRE

The Syrian Revolution Coordinating Commission said at least 30 civilians in Homs were killed in bombardment on Thursday morning on mainly Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods that have been the focus of attacks by the government forces led largely by members of Assad's Alawite religious minority.
Such sectarian divisions have been coming to the surface as killings have increased on either side of the conflict.

The main street in Baba Amro was strewn with rubble and at least one house was destroyed, according to YouTube footage broadcast by activists from the district who said troops had used anti-aircraft cannon to demolish the building.

The video showed a youth putting two bodies wrapped in blankets in a truck. What appeared to be body parts were shown inside the house.

The Syrian Human Rights Organisation (Sawasiah)said in a statement that this week's assault on Homs had killed at least 300 civilians and wounded 1,000, not counting Thursday's toll.

International officials have estimated the overall death toll in Syria since last March at over 5,000.
Activists said neighbourhoods of Homs remained without electricity and water and basic supplies were running low.

There was no comment from the Syrian authorities, who have placed tight restrictions on access to the country and it was not possible to verify the reports of local activists.

Mazen Adi, a prominent Syrian opposition figure in Paris, said rebels loosely organised under the Free Syrian Army were fighting back and staging hit-and-run guerrilla attacks against government forces in Homs.

"The regime cannot keep tanks for long inside opposition neighbourhoods because they will be ambushed," he said.

"It is retaliating by hysterical bombing that is killing mostly civilians and with mass executions."
The role of the Free Syrian Army, largely made up of soldiers who have defected from the government forces, highlighted the slide in the uprising against the Assad family's 42-year dynastic rule from civilian demonstrations to armed insurgency over the past few months.

KURDISH PRECEDENT

Exile activist Massoud Akko said Turkey and Western countries should organise an airlift to Homs and other stricken cities and towns that have borne the brunt of the crackdown.

"This could be done by air drops into Homs similar to what the United States did in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990s," Akko said, of help for Iraq's ethnic minority during its fight against Saddam Hussein.

Syria's position at the heart of the Middle East, allied to Iran and home to a volatile religious and ethnic mix, means Assad's international opponents have ruled out the kind of military action they took against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

Russia and China, which let the United Nations support the air campaign in Libya, provoked strong condemnation from the United States, European powers and Arab governments when they vetoed a resolution in the Security Council last week that called on Assad to step down.

Moscow, for whom Syria is a buyer of arms and host to a Soviet-era naval base, wants to counter U.S. influence and maintain its traditional role in the Middle East.

For both Russia and China, Syria is also a test case for efforts to resist international encroachment on sovereign governments' freedom to deal with rebels as they see fit.

PUTIN SAYS NO INTERFERENCE

Campaigning for next month's presidential election that he is certain to win, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said: "A cult of violence has been coming to the fore in international affairs ... This cannot fail to cause concern.

"Help them, advise them, limit, for instance, their ability to use weapons but not interfere under any circumstances."

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who had described the Russian and Chinese veto at the U.N. as a "fiasco", telephoned outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday.

The Kremlin said Medvedev told Erdogan the search for a solution should continue but that foreign interference was not an option.

The U.N.'s Ban said it was more urgent than ever to find common ground. In an implicit criticism of the Assad government, he said: "Such violence is unacceptable before humanity ... We have heard too many broken promises, even within the past 24 hours."

In Washington, officials said the United States planned to meet soon with its allies to discuss ways to halt the violence and provide humanitarian aid to civilians under attack.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the talks, which would include the opposition Syrian National Council, were aimed at helping the process "move toward a peaceful, political transition, democratic transition in Syria".

Any international move to bring in humanitarian aid could open a dangerous and complicated new chapter in the crisis, with air drops seen as expensive and ineffective and any land routes open to attack from Syrian forces. But the White House stressed it was not actively considering military intervention.

"We never rule anything out in a situation like this," Carney said. "But we are pursuing a path that includes isolating and pressuring the Assad regime so that it stops its heinous slaughtering of its own people." (Additional reporting by Simon Cameron-Moore and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Erika Solomon in Beirut, John Irish in Paris, Yasmine Saleh and Ayman Samir in Cairo and Alister Bull, Matt Spetalnick and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Angus MacSwan in Beirut; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

We'll screen shocking images of violence and child abuse that proves Syrian torture policy

Shocking Images in Syria

Some of the most graphic images ever to be shown on British television will be screened tomorrow night.

Channel 4 is planning to broadcast shocking film of protesters – including children, teachers and a mayor – allegedly being beaten by members of Syria’s secret police.

It claims the images provide ‘irrefutable prima facie’ evidence that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is torturing its citizens.

Executives have sanctioned the broadcasting of the footage after the 9pm watershed but it was deemed too explicit for the station’s early evening news.

Instead, the documentary, ent-itled Syria’s Torture Machine and presented by Jonathan Miller, will be shown at 11.10pm.

Siobhan Sinnerton, Channel 4’s current affairs commissioning editor, said: ‘Assad’s government has denied accusations of torture. This film aims to establish, through forensic analysis, the extent to which torture is systematic.’

The UN estimates 5,000 Syrians have been killed and 50,000 tortured since the Arab Spring uprising spread to the country in March. More than 30,000 videos showing violent repression have been put on the internet, which Assad’s regime insists are faked.

Now Channel 4 has investigated some of that footage and claims it has verified it, presenting strong evidence that the regime is committing crimes against humanity.

The revelation is expected to cause shockwaves and revulsion around the world. Mr Miller said: ‘We got a group of independent experts, including an exiled former member of the security forces, Syrian translators, a forensic pathologist, a specialist doctor and IT experts to examine the footage.

‘The result is a grotesque collection of verified videos which we believe shows the regime is committing crimes against humanity.

‘The film is too horrific to broadcast on pre-watershed news but we believe it is too important not to show. The world has to know what’s going on in Syria. It’s torture on an industrial scale. And it’s going on right now.’

The images were allegedly sourced from ‘trophy’ footage taken by officers from the four main pillars of the secret police – military intelligence, air force intelligence, the political security directorate and the general security directorate – and mobile phone footage made by protesters and family members.

Perhaps most shocking is what Channel 4 believes is trophy footage of teacher and father-of-six Loay Abdul Hakim al-Amer being tortured and killed. His ankles are bound to an assault rifle so that the soles of his feet can be whipped by Special Forces soldiers.

‘Film me while I’m hitting him,’ one soldier orders. ‘Shall I shoot him and get rid of him?’ another yells. Five days later his body was returned to his family bearing the tell-tale marks of torture.

In another piece of suspected trophy footage, a blindfolded man, his hands tied behind his back, is allegedly kicked and stamped on by soldiers with Alawite accents – the minority Shia Muslim sect to which the President and the army’s officer corps belong. ‘Kick him, kick him,’ one says.

A third shows the mayor of a district in Idlib province being subjected to a foot-whipping technique known as falaqa.

The footage is believed to have been filmed by soldiers from the elite 4th Armoured Division, which is commanded by Assad’s brother Maher. The victim is seen passing out after being kicked in the head.

Professor Derrick Pounder, a forensic pathologist at Dundee University, reviewed 20 videos for the film and concluded: ‘It is crude, physical violence in an extreme form.

‘It would suggest that what was happening was on a wide scale and is carried out with impunity.’

The Mail on Sunday contacted the Syrian Embassy about the film but staff did not respond.

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Syria death toll hits 5,000 as insurgency spreads

People of Syria with dead body

(Reuters) - More than 5,000 people have been killed in nine months of unrest in Syria, the U.N. human rights chief said, as an insurgency began to overshadow what had initially been street protests against President Bashar al-Assad's 11-year rule.

Navi Pillay reported the death toll to the U.N. Security Council as 1,000 higher than the previous toll just 10 days ago. It includes civilians, army defectors and those executed for refusing to shoot civilians, but not soldiers or security personnel killed by opposition forces, she said.

The Syrian government has said more than 1,100 members of the army, police and security services have been killed.

Syria's actions could constitute crimes against humanity, said Pillay, issuing a fresh call for the council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.

"It was the most horrifying briefing that we've had in the Security Council over the last two years," British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said after the session, which was arranged despite opposition from Russia, China and Brazil.

The sharp rise in the death toll is bound to lend weight to those arguing for increased international intervention to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Assad, 46, whose minority Alawite family has held power over majority Sunni Muslim Syria for four decades, faces the most serious challenge to his rule from the turmoil which erupted in the southern city of Deraa on March 18.

A violent security crackdown failed to halt the unrest -- inspired by popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya -- which turned bloodier in the last few months as defecting soldiers join armed civilians in fighting back in some areas.

DAWN BLOODSHED

In the latest violence around dawn on Tuesday, security forces shot dead 11 people and wounded 26 others in Idlib, a northern protest hotbed, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At the flashpoint central province of Homs, an explosion set a gas pipeline on fire on Monday, the second reported pipeline blast in the area in a week. "The fire lit the night sky," said a resident who gave his name as Abu Khalaf.

State news agency SANA said the pipeline, near the town of Rastan, supplied gas to an electricity power plant.

SANA also said border guards foiled an attempt by "an armed terrorist group" to cross into Syria from Turkey on Monday, the second such reported incident in a week. It said they shot dead two of the 15-strong group.

The Observatory said a pro-Assad armed group was holding 17 workers seized in Homs on Saturday.

Despite the spiraling violence, Syrian authorities held local elections on Monday as part of what they say is a reform process, but Assad's critics described the voting as irrelevant.

Monday was also the second day of the opposition's "Strike for Dignity," but its success was hard to gauge in some cities where violence has kept many residents in their homes.

Though the strike has found support in protest strongholds around the country, it has not taken hold in central parts of the capital Damascus or the business hub of Aleppo.

Syria has barred most independent journalists, making it hard to assess conflicting accounts of events there.

"SYSTEMATIC ATTACK"

In New York, Western envoys on the Security Council said Pillay's briefing on Monday was horrifying and termed it scandalous that the council, paralyzed by opposition from Russia and China, had taken little action on Syria.

"Independent, credible and corroborated accounts demonstrate that these abuses have taken place as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians," Pillay said, according to briefing notes seen by Reuters.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud said, "It is scandalous that the council, because of opposition from some members and the indifference of others ... has not been able to act to exert pressure on the Syrian authorities."

More than 14,000 people were reportedly in detention, at least 12,400 had sought refuge in neighboring countries and tens of thousands had been internally displaced, Pillay said, also citing "alarming reports" of moves against the city of Homs.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he too was troubled by Pillay's report, but he said outside intervention could lead to civil war and a far higher death toll.

He repeated accusations that Western countries had gone into "regime-change mode," adding, "The tragedy is that if things were allowed to degenerate and to go in the direction of further provocation, of fanning further confrontation, then maybe (there would be) hundreds of thousands dead."

Russia joined China to block Western efforts to pass a resolution against Syria in the U.N. Security Council.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said Pillay should never have appeared before the council for a session that was part of a "huge conspiracy concocted against Syria from the beginning."

POLLS -- REFORM OR SHAM?

Assad's government portrays the municipal polls as part of a process leading to a parliamentary election next year and constitutional reform. But critics say local elections have little meaning in a country where power is highly centralized.

Prime Minister Adel Safar urged voters to "stand together to save our country from the conspiracies against us" and SANA said Syrians had flocked to the polls in 9,849 voting centers.

Assad has said reforms cannot be rushed in Baathist-ruled Syria, which is a close ally of Iran, a key player in nearby Lebanon and supporter of militant anti-Israel groups.

Some of his opponents see civil disobedience such as the strike action as preferable to armed confrontation, with the risk of civil war looming.

"The cost will be more human lives I am afraid," said Rima Fleihan, a member of the foreign-based opposition Syrian National Council.

"But it is less costly than an armed uprising and the regime dragging the country into a Libya-type scenario."

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