Pro-Assad forces kill dozens, foes report

Syrians and Jordanians mourn seven members of a Syrian family who died Wednesday night in a ÿ re at a refugee-processing center in Ramtha, Jordan.

Syrians and Jordanians mourn seven members of a Syrian family who died Wednesday night in a ÿ re at a refugee-processing center in Ramtha, Jordan.

Friday, January 18, 2013

— Gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad swept through a mainly Sunni farming village in central Syria this week, torching houses and killing more than 100 people, including women and children, opposition activists said Thursday.

The reported slayings fueled accusations that progovernment militiamen are trying to drive majority Sunnis out of areas near main routes to the coast to ensure control of an Alawite enclave as the country’s civil war increasingly takes on sectarian overtones.

Activists said the attackers were from nearby areas dominated by Shiite Muslims and allied Alawites. Assad and most of the top officials in his regime belong to the minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot.

The events in Haswiyeh, an impoverished farming area on the edge of Homs, unfolded Tuesday and Wednesday, but only came to light Thursday as the reported scale of the killings became apparent.

An amateur video posted online showed veiled women sitting on the floor surrounded by children as they described the shooting of people and the burning of bodies.

“They slaughtered members of the same families then turned the diesel heaters on them,” one of the women said, adding that some homes were robbed of money and jewelry as well. “We did not fight and we had no gunmen. We are all workers trying to make a living.”

Another video showed a charred room with what appeared to be two blackened bodies on the floor. A man could be heard weeping in the background. The caption said the video is from Haswiyeh.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting on the events depicted, although exact details of what happened were unclear and could not be independently verified because of restrictions on independent media.

A government official in Damascus denied the reports, saying no such killings took place in the area and accusing rebels of using civilians as “human shields.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

However, the pro-government daily newspaper Al-Watan reported Thursday that Syrian troops advanced in the countryside of Homs “cleansing the villages of Haswiyeh and Dweir as well as their fields” from gunmen. It did not elaborate.

The opposition believes the mass killings that have occurred mostly in overwhelmingly Sunni villages that lie near main routes into the Alawite sect’s coastal strip are meant to lay the groundwork for a breakaway enclave.

Sunnis account for the majority of Syria’s 23 million people but have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the Alawite Assad dynasty.

The uprising against Assad began in March 2011 as the socalled wave of Arab Spring revolutions was sweeping the Middle East. The U.N. says at least 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Haswiyeh is controlled by government forces, but activists said many of its residents have sons in the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel group fighting to topple Assad’s forces.

“This is a purely sectarian attack meant to punish the rebels by targeting their families,” said Abu Yazan, an opposition activist speaking via Skype from Houla. Rebels and government troops are known to have clashed in the area around Haswiyeh earlier this week.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll, as is often the case in Syria where information is limited, although all the activists agreed all the victims appeared to be Sunnis.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists in Syria, said 106 people were killed in the two-day rampage, with some “burnt inside their homes and others killed with knives” and other weapons.

Homs-based activist Youssef al-Homsi said at least 100 people were killed in Haswiyeh. He sent via Skype a list of 100 names of those killed. Al-Homsi also said locals reported that many of the attackers were from the nearby village of Mazraa, which he said is predominantly Shiite.

A third opposition activist in Homs said he had collected the names of 50 people killed, but added others were still missing. It was not possible to confirm the activist reports or reconcile their figures.

Elsewhere in Syria, activists reported air raids Thursday in the suburbs of the capital and clashes in the town of Beit Saham near the international airport outside Damascus. They also said an air raid killed at least 15 people in the town of Kfar Nabouedeh in the central province of Hama.

Activists on Thursday night said a foreign journalist died while covering clashes between rebels and regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo. The Aleppo Media Center, a network of anti-regime activists in the city, said the journalist was shot by a regime sniper positioned on the roof of the Aleppo central prison near the Museilmeh district.

The claim could not be independently verified.

State-run news agency SANA, meanwhile, said gunmen killed Walid al-Abboud, the brother of lawmaker Khaled al-Abboud. The 49-year-old engineer was gunned down in front of his house in the Damascus suburb of Qatana as he was leaving for work, it said.

In Turkey, about 6,500 Syrians in a refugee camp voted Thursday to select camp leaders and administrators in elections the Turkish government has described as a practice for democracy.

Refugees at the Oncupinar camp in Turkey’s border province of Kilis cast ballots into clear plastic boxes inside a makeshift school under banners that read: “Syrian citizens elect their own representatives freely.”

Meanwhile, Jordan’s prime minister said Thursday that his nation will prevent a mass exodus of Syrian refugees from entering its territory if Assad’s regime collapses, and will instead create a safe haven inside Syria to protect them.

Abdullah Ensour’s remarks reflect widely held concerns in Jordan, which is already hosting 285,000 Syrian refugees and has exhausted its meager health-care, education, water and energy resources.

Jordan is also anxious that the lawlessness and street chaos that could follow Assad’s collapse would spill over Syria’s southern border into the kingdom — a traditionally quiet country with a prided security record in the volatile Mideast.

“If the regime collapses and there was another exodus of refugees, we will stop them and keep them in their country,” Ensour told reporters in his office.

Information for this article was contributed by Jamal Halaby, Zeynep Cermen, Suzan Fraser, Ezgi Akin and Ayse Wieting of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 01/18/2013