DAMASCUS: Amnesty International yesterday accused Syria of committing crimes against humanity to punish communities supporting rebels, as monitors reported a spate of car bombs and clashes which killed dozens more people.
The London-based rights group called for an international response after claiming it had fresh evidence that victims, including children, had been dragged from their homes and shot dead by soldiers, who in some cases then set the remains on fire.
“This disturbing new evidence of an organized pattern of grave abuses highlights the pressing need for decisive international action,” said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera on the release of the 70-page report entitled Deadly Reprisals.
The advocacy group interviewed people in 23 towns and villages across Syria and concluded that government forces and militias were guilty of “grave human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
The report comes a day after the government said it had “cleansed terrorists” from Al-Haffe, a Sunni enclave in northwest Syria that had been a bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, and as monitors reported more than 80 people killed since Wednesday.
A car bomb in Idlib city in northwestern Syria early yesterday targeted a military checkpoint, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that a number of soldiers were killed or wounded in the blast.
In Damascus, a car bomb exploded early morning in a suburb that houses a popular Shiite shrine, wounding two people, Syrian state media reported. The blast in the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood occurred near the Sadr hospital, leaving a large crater and damaging vehicles. State news agency SANA said the booby-trapped vehicle was parked in a garage. It gave an initial toll of two people wounded.
More than 14,400 people have been killed in Syria in the 15-month revolt against Bashar Assad’s regime, including 2,302 in the past month alone, a monitoring group said yesterday.
“There have been 14,476 people killed since March 2011, among them 10,117 civilians, 3,552 soldiers and 807 army defectors,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said. The civilian toll includes casualties among rebels who have taken up arms against the regime.
Since the implementation of a UN-Arab League brokered cease-fire on April 12, at least 3,353 people were killed, the majority of them in the past month.
“From May 13 to June 13, there were 2,302 people killed in Syria,” Abdel Rahman said, listing 1,455 civilians, 96 dissidents and 751 soldiers, who accounted for nearly a third of the total.
“In the past month, there has been an escalation of clashes between regime forces and rebel troops as well as shelling, which has led to a sharp increase in casualties,” the Observatory head said.
China’s Foreign Ministry signaled misgivings yesterday with a French proposal to enforce UN envoy Kofi Annan’s Syria peace plan, saying it opposed any approach “leaning toward sanctions and pressure.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin did not directly answer a question about the French proposal when asked about it at a regular briefing, but appeared not to reject it outright. But he made plain Beijing’s reluctance.
“We believe that the international community’s actions regarding Syria should be conducive to easing conditions there and conducive to a political solution to the Syrian crisis,” Liu said. “China disapproves of the approach of leaning toward sanctions and pressure.
“We believe that in current circumstances, all sides should vigorously support envoy Annan’s mediation efforts and urge all sides in Syria to truly implement the UN Security Council’s resolution and Annan’s six-point proposal,” Liu said.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday that France would propose giving the United Nations the power to enforce Annan’s plan. He said a no-fly zone was under consideration in what he described as a civil war.
Asked about comments from other governments, including Russia, that they could accept Assad stepping down, Liu said: “We have stated many times that China does not deliberately favor any side, and Syria’s path of development and political system should be determined by the Syrian people.”
A UN observer convoy has arrived in the Syrian town of Haffeh, a UN spokeswoman said, two days after the monitors were forced to turn back from the site of recent clashes due to attacks by angry residents.
“Our observers entered Al-Haffe,” spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh said in an e-mail. International envoy Kofi Annan said on Monday he was worried residents were trapped in Al-Haffe, while the United States said it feared a “potential massacre” was under way. Syria’s ambassador to Moscow said yesterday that Russia is not supplying Syria’s government with attack helicopters, the most specific denial yet from Moscow or Damascus of remarks by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Russia is not delivering any helicopters to Syria,” Ambassador Riad Haddad told Reuters, speaking two days after Clinton said the United States had information that attack helicopters were on the way from Russia to Syria.
Russia has faced increasing Western criticism over arms supplies to Syria, where the United Nations says government forces have killed more than 10,000 people in bloodshed that began with a crackdown on pro-democracy protests in March 2011.
Russia says it is fulfilling existing contracts for supplies of air defense systems, for use against external attacks, and is not sending Syria weapons that could be used in the internal conflict. Haddad echoed those statements, telling a news conference, “These are defensive weapons.”
A source close to Russia’s weapons export monopoly Rosoboronexport said there have been no recent contracts between Russia and Syria for the delivery of attack helicopters to Damascus, but that Clinton may have been referring to five military helicopters which had been repaired in Russia.
