Syria Qubair: Bloody traces of massacre seen in village
Syria Qubair: Bloody traces of massacre seen in village
Ban Ki-moon: "How many more times have we to condemn them?"
The
smell of burnt flesh and evidence of bloodshed have greeted a BBC
correspondent entering the village of Qubair in Syria, scene of a
massacre.
Our correspondent, travelling with UN monitors, found
buildings gutted and burnt, but no sign of people in the tiny village
near the city of Hama.Violence continues across Syria, with reports that the central city of Homs came under heavy shelling.
Elsewhere, state TV reported two deadly car bomb attacks.
Condemning the Qubair massacre earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned of an imminent danger of civil war and the international peace envoy, Kofi Annan, said his six-point peace plan was not being implemented.
As many as 78 people are said to have been killed in the Qubair attack.
The opposition blamed it on militia allied to President Bashar al-Assad while the government accused "terrorists" of killing civilians.
Clandestine activists say government forces removed many of the bodies while the UN observers were being hindered from reaching the village on Thursday, coming under fire at one stage.
UN monitors finally reached Qubair on Friday, with the BBC's Paul Danahar accompanting them.
Lebanese scenario? Analysts say the major fear is that Syria falls victim to the kind of sectarian violence that tore Lebanon apart for decades.
The militiamen accused of the killings are known as shabiha, and are mainly from the minority Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad.
At the scene
The largest of the two houses on the hilltop has been gutted by fire. The stench of burnt flesh is still strong. In front of me there is a piece of brain, in the corner there is a mass on congealed blood.
The village is just a few single-storey flat-roofed buildings set in the middle of golden corn fields.
The victims appear to be mostly Sunni Muslims, who make up the majority of the population.
Speaking at the UN in New York on Thursday, Mr Ban warned the danger of full-scale war was "imminent and real".While the Annan plan remained the focus of peace efforts, he said, urgent talks were needed on how further to proceed.
The US is demanding decisive action, and Mr Annan is pushing for a contact group of key nations to raise pressure for an end to the violence.
But in a news conference in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin refused to answer repeated questions about whether his government would support the initiative.
"We believe that the importance of envoy Annan's mediation efforts has not diminished but rather increased," he said.
Both China and Russia have twice blocked Security Council resolutions against Syria and have restated their opposition to outside military intervention in the conflict.
'Homs shelled' On Friday, clandestine activists said government forces had resumed shelling the Khaldiyeh area of Homs, which is controlled by rebels.
"Khaldiyeh is being subjected to five to 10 shells a minute in the worst shelling since the revolution began," the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.
A car bomb in the north-western city of Idlib killed two police officers and three civilians, wounding others, state TV said. A second car bomb in Rif Dimashq, near Damascus, killed three police officers and caused injuries, it added.
About 200 people are said to have died on Wednesday and Thursday, in figures which could not be confirmed independently.
The UN says at least 9,000 people have died since pro-democracy protests began in March 2011. In April, the Syrian government reported that 6,143 Syrian citizens had been killed by "terrorist groups".
The UN has 297 unarmed observers in Syria to verify the implementation of Mr Annan's plan.
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