Syrian President Bashir Al-Sahad |
More than 100 civilians have been killed
in a new “massacre” in Syria, a watchdog said Thursday, as Russia
slammed the United States for blaming deadly blasts at a university
campus on the Damascus regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
said the deaths came when the army on Tuesday swept through farmlands
north of Homs, where it said around 1,000 people had sought refuge from
fighting ravaging the city in central Syria.
“The Syrian regime carried out a new
massacre on Tuesday claiming 106 victims, including women and children,”
said the Britain-based watchdog, which relies on a network of activists
and medics on the ground.
Witnesses said several members of the
same family were among those killed, some in fires that raged through
their homes and others stabbed or hacked to death. Among the dead were
32 members of the same clan.
Al-Watan newspaper, a pro-government
daily, reported army advances against “gunmen” — the term used by the
regime for insurgents — in the area where the killings reportedly took
place.
But activists on the ground quoted by
the Observatory denied that rebels were present in the area, which is
about five kilometres (three miles) from the Homs city centre.
Homs, dubbed “the capital of the
revolution” by Syria’s opposition, is the largest and most strategic
province in the country, lying on key trade routes near the borders with
Lebanon and Iraq, and with its southwestern areas not far from
Damascus.
Troops and rebels have been battling to
gain dominance in the city and the province, with many areas under siege
by regime forces for more than six months.
The Observatory urged the UN to send a fact-finding team to probe the latest bloodshed.
The reported deaths were the latest to
emerge from Syria, where twin blasts tore on Tuesday through an Aleppo
campus while students were writing exams, killing at least 87 people.
No one claimed responsibility for the
Aleppo blasts but the United States blamed government forces for the
violence, suggesting they were caused by air strikes on university
buildings.
“The United States is appalled and
saddened by the Syrian regime’s deadly attack yesterday on the
University of Aleppo,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said
on Wednesday.
Nuland’s remarks triggered an angry response from Russia.
“I cannot imagine anything more
blasphemous,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday,
describing the killings as a “terrorist act.”
The Observatory said the death toll from
Tuesday’s blasts at Aleppo University could top 100 as many of the
wounded were critically hurt, which would make it one of the bloodiest
attacks of the 22-month conflict.
Rebels in Aleppo told AFP they are
trying to break a months-long deadlock in their battle for Syria’s
second city by cutting supply routes ahead of simultaneous assaults on
regime bases.
“The FSA (the rebel Free Syrian Army) is
making new steps to liberate the city,” Hajji Anadan, the non-military
chief of the Al-Tawheed Brigade headquartered in Aleppo, said in an
interview on Wednesday.
“The FSA is surrounding the city and is
moving on the airports. It is cutting off the routes so the army can’t
get supplies or munitions,” he said.
Violence erupted again in Syria on
Thursday, with the Observatory reporting 11 civilians, including seven
children, killed in an air strike near Damascus.
Warplanes fired three missiles on the
western district of Husseiniyeh, an area in Damascus province which is
home to Palestinian refugees and Syrians displaced from the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights region, the watchdog said.
More than 60,000 people, mostly
civilians, have been killed in Syria’s conflict, according to the United
Nations, while the Observatory says it has documented more than 48,000
dead.
On Wednesday alone, 148 people were killed in violence across Syria, said the watchdog, among them 77 civilians.
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