Activist group: 144 dead across Syria

A Free Syr­ian Army fighter takes a posi­tion as the Syr­ian Army advances towards the town of Sarmin, north of Syria, Mon­day. Euro­pean Union for­eign min­is­ters said they were increas­ingly appalled by the Syr­ian government’s ruth­less cam­paign of repres­sion against civil­ians, and imposed new sanc­tions in hopes of pres­sur­ing the regime to change course. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

BEN HUBBARD

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — A Syr­ian activist group reported Mon­day that 144 peo­ple have been killed across the coun­try, scores of them in the embat­tled oppo­si­tion strong­hold of Homs by secu­rity forces as they tried to flee. A team from the Syr­ian arm of the Red Cross deliv­ered aid to one of the city’s most dan­ger­ous neigh­bor­hoods after days of try­ing to reach the area.

The activist group did not say whether all 144 died on Mon­day or were killed over the past few days. Many of the casu­al­ties were believed to be from the rebel-controlled Baba Amr neigh­bor­hood of Homs, which the Syr­ian Arab Red Cres­cent entered late Mon­day. Also in the neigh­bor­hood are two wounded for­eign jour­nal­ists along with the bod­ies of two of their col­leagues who were killed last week.

Euro­pean and Amer­i­can diplo­mats and aid work­ers have been try­ing des­per­ately to find a way to evac­u­ate them, but Red Cross spokes­woman Carla Had­dad said late Mon­day that the Red Cres­cent had not man­aged to get them out. She did not know whether the group had stopped try­ing for the evening.

Homs has emerged as the cen­ter of the 11-month-old upris­ing seek­ing to oust author­i­tar­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad and has borne the brunt of his regime’s bloody crack­down on dis­sent. Parts of the city have been sur­rounded for weeks, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for res­cue work­ers to reach the wounded and for fam­i­lies to bring their dead and injured to the hospital.

Reports by numer­ous activists that more than 60 bod­ies were brought to the hos­pi­tal, all of whom appeared to have died in one inci­dent, reflect the spread­ing carnage.

The high death toll reported by the Local Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tees activist group is sure to add to the grow­ing inter­na­tional pres­sure on Assad to give up power. But so far, his regime has shown no signs that it is ready to leave peacefully.

Syr­ian offi­cials announced the results of a ref­er­en­dum on a new con­sti­tu­tion held Sun­day that Syr­ian author­i­ties lauded as a step toward polit­i­cal reform.

The ref­er­en­dum allows at least in the­ory for open­ing the country’s polit­i­cal sys­tem. It approves a new con­sti­tu­tion, which allows for a mul­ti­party sys­tem in Syria, which has been ruled by the Baath party since it took power in a coup in 1963. Assad’s father, Hafez, took power in another coup in 1970.

It also imposes a limit of two seven-year terms on the pres­i­dent, mean­ing Assad could remain legally in power through 2028.

The U.S. and its allies dis­missed the vote as a “farce” meant to jus­tify the regime’s bloody crack­down on dis­sent. Syria’s main oppo­si­tion groups boy­cotted the vote, and vio­lence else­where pre­vented polling.

Syr­ian state TV said 89 per­cent of eli­gi­ble vot­ers approved the new doc­u­ment, while nine per­cent rejected it. It put turnout at 57 per­cent of Syria’s 14.9 mil­lion eli­gi­ble voters.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of more than 60 coun­tries met in Tunisia last week to forge a uni­fied strat­egy to push Assad from power and began plan­ning a civil­ian peace­keep­ing mis­sion to deploy after the regime falls. On Mon­day, the Euro­pean Union imposed new sanctions.

Syria has been able to count on allies China and Rus­sia to pro­tect it from con­dem­na­tion by the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil. Both staunchly opposed any inter­fer­ence in Syria’s affairs.

Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Vladimir Putin warned Mon­day against mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syria and blasted the West, say­ing it had backed the Arab Spring to advance its inter­ests in the region.

In Dam­as­cus, a Syr­ian offi­cial accused the West of try­ing to desta­bi­lize the coun­try for its own gain and warned that mil­i­ta­riz­ing the oppo­si­tion is a big mis­take that will backfire.

For­eign Min­istry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told The Asso­ci­ated Press in a rare inter­view that dia­logue among all par­ties is the only way to end the conflict.

“The West took advan­tage of the awak­en­ing of the Syr­ian street. Instead of help­ing Syria to over­come this painful cri­sis, they are using this to hit the sta­bil­ity of Syria for other geopo­lit­i­cal rea­sons,” he said.

Activists groups said Mon­day that the death toll for 11 months of unrest has now sur­passed 8,000 people.

The diplo­matic pres­sure on Syria comes as the human­i­tar­ian and secu­rity sit­u­a­tion on the ground is col­laps­ing. The Local Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tees said 64 of those reported dead on Mon­day were flee­ing shelling in the Baba Amr neigh­bor­hood of Homs when secu­rity forces stopped them at a check­point in the city’s Abil area and killed them.

Another activist in Baba Amr, reached via Skype, said a secu­rity offi­cer who had seen a report on the inci­dent leaked its con­tents to activists, with whom he sympathizes.

The activist, Abu Mohammed Ibrahim, said the group left the neigh­bor­hood Sun­day evening and were stopped at a check­point, where secu­rity forces loaded them onto four busses. A while later, the buses stopped and the sol­diers started killing pas­sen­gers. Locals found the bod­ies dumped in two places out­side of town on Mon­day, the activist said.

A sec­ond activist group, the Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights, said 68 bod­ies were brought to the hos­pi­tal in Homs and that they were found between the vil­lages of Ram al-Anz and al-Ajriyeh.

But the group’s head, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said no one had iden­ti­fied the dead or knew where they were from.

“We know they are from Homs, but we don’t know any­thing for sure about who they are or how they died,” he said.

None of the death tolls could be inde­pen­dently verified.

Some of the worst fight­ing in Syria’s nearly one-year-long con­flict has come in Homs, where res­i­dents have been bom­barded by Syr­ian gov­ern­ment forces for nearly four weeks.

Two west­ern jour­nal­ists were killed in gov­ern­ment shelling in Homs last week, and two other jour­nal­ists injured.

Poland said Mon­day its diplo­mats are work­ing with U.S., British and French author­i­ties to evac­u­ate the two reporters — Edith Bou­vier of France and Paul Con­roy of Britain — as well as the bod­ies of Amer­i­can Marie Colvin and French­man Remi Ochlik, who were killed in the same attack.

French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy accused Syr­ian author­i­ties of assas­si­nat­ing Colvin and Ochlik by tar­get­ing a makeshift media cen­ter where they were killed.

“When the Syr­ian army fires shells sev­eral times on a build­ing that they per­fectly well knew was a press cen­ter … it’s an assas­si­na­tion,” he said dur­ing an inter­view with RTL.

Posted by AP News on Feb 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.