Warning: Graphic images from Tremseh
Warning: Graphic images from Tremseh
The Syrian government’s armed forces and paramilitary
shabiha Thursday slaughtered some 220 men, women and children in Tremseh, a
small Sunni village in Syria’s central province of Hama.
It is not only the third copycat massacre in seven
weeks, but also the bloodiest in the Syria conflict.
The first massacre was in Houla,
north of Homs, on May 25, when over 100 villagers, including dozens of women
and children, were either shot or stabbed to death.
The second was on June 6 in Qubair,
twelve miles from Hama, Syria’s fifth largest city, where at least 78 civilians
were massacred, 40 of them women and children.
Yesterday’s was in Tremseh, again near Hama, where Bashar
al-Assad’s father, Hafez, killed some 30,000 civilians in the February 1982 Hama Massacre.
Tremseh was attacked with helicopter gunships and
tanks before the shabiha militia went in on foot and carried out the
execution-style killings with knives and AK-47s. They then torched some of the
houses and bodies.
Activists say many of the victims were displaced
people from the neighboring village of Khneizra.
They say bodies are stacked in Tremseh’s mosque and many
others are either buried under the rubble or scattered in the farming fields.
Activists say government
forces surrounded the village on Thursday morning and heavily bombarded it for
several hours, killing many people.
Shabiha militias from
nearby Alawite villages then moved in, they said, killing many more villagers
and setting fire to houses. Others who tried to flee through fields were also
gunned down, the activists said.
One
activist, named Ahmed, told Reuters: "So far, we have 20 victims recorded
with names and 60 bodies at a mosque. There are more bodies in the fields,
bodies in the rivers and in houses... People were trying to flee from the time
the shelling started and whole families were killed trying to escape."
Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Free Syria Army’s
Military Council, said there were no FSA fighters in Tremseh, “which was
attacked because it supports the revolution.”
The commander of the FSA, Col. Riad al-Asaad,
confirmed this and urged Syrians, whether military or civilian, to mobilize,
cutoff roads and attack military airports.
The opposition umbrella Syrian National Council (SNC)
said in a statement the gruesome massacre in Tremseh “ranks among the Syrian
regime’s most infamous genocides.”
Separately, the SNC’s Human Rights Bureau put the
number of Syrians killed on Thursday at “more than 343, among them many women
and children… most of whom were victims of a massacre in Tremseh.”
UN
and Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan says he is “shocked and appalled” at
reports of mass killings in Tremseh.
“Mothballed” in Hama since June 16, some of his UN
observers are now reportedly trying to reach Tremseh “to investigate” the
killings.
Wafik
al-Samarraie, writing for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, warns today, “Do not underestimate the genocide
campaigns’ danger to the revolution.”
“Without wanting to cause a major letdown,” he opines,
“the facts show the regime still has the upper hand on the ground as well as
the ability to mount extermination campaigns that pause a serious threat to the
revolution.
“While weapons and hardware continue to flow
abundantly into the regular army’s depots, military supplies liable to help
insurgents protect civilians remain wanting.
“Until this writing, not one shoulder-launched
missile has been fired at warplanes or gunships targeting civilians. Pictures
showing FSA fighters carrying man-portable anti-tank weapons are extremely rare
although civilians are constantly bombarded by tank formations.
“We’ve heard a lot from the regime and its backers
about the ‘flood of military gear reaching the insurgents’, but there is no
sign of this anywhere. The few cars we see on video clips are antiquated and
unfit for the battlefield. Personal weapons the insurgents are carrying date
back to the 1950s. You can also tell from the video clips the insurgents hardly
have anything resembling military dress or boots. All this proves the Syria
arms embargo is clamped on one side only…”
It is noteworthy, Samarraie concludes, that the
regime has in recent weeks resorted to salami slicing tactics, whereby it would
isolate chunks of restive areas and then blitz each one in turn. The process
pauses a significant threat to the arms-starved revolution. “If this persists,
the outcome is fraught with uncertainty.”
