Syria accuses 800 heavily armed men of Houla killings

Syria said Thursday that preliminary investigations showed that 800 heavily armed men carried out attacks on government forces and slaughtered families in Houla last week.

A handout picture released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows the bodies of 108 people including 32 children before their burial in the central Syrian town of Houla on May 26, 2012. [Xinhua]

Brigadier-General Qasem Jamal Sulaiman, head of the inquiry committee tasked with probing the controversial massacre of Syria's central village of Houla, said at a press conference that the armed groups attacked several posts of the government troops in a bid to seize control of Houla and push it out of the government control.

He said that the armed groups' attacks targeted two army bases in the area, adding that the government troops responded in self-defense and did not leave their bases or enter Houla.

He said that the targeted families were peaceful ones who neither have participated in any anti-government activities nor took up arms against the government, adding that the armed groups have sought to take revenge of those families for not joining attacks on the government troops and also to spark international sympathy.

Sulaiman stressed that "these are only initial assessment," and "the initial reports were based on testimonies from eye witnesses."

He claimed that a number of dead bodies shown on TV belonged to the armed men, who were killed in the clashes with the government troops, adding that the images of the gunmen' corpses were aired on tendentious TVs as the images of victims.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said that his government had asked the head of the UN supervision mission in Syria to examine the massacre site, adding that the final reports would be submitted to the international community once available.

Makdissi said the investigation is still underway for more details and clues, adding that the investigation is transparent and that there is no need for international inquiry.

He meanwhile said there were schemes from the higher levels in the international community to foment a sectarian rift in the country.

The recent appalling attacks in Houla, a group of villages 25 km northwest of the central city of Homs, had claimed the lives of more than 108 people, including at least 49 children under the age of 10 and 32 women.

The Syrian government and the opposition traded barbs over the heinous attacks that did not even spare the children.

As the Syrian government categorically denied any involvement of its troops in the carnage and accused armed groups of carrying out the killings, the opposition activists accused the government forces of shelling the village, adding that pro-government militias have done the bulk of the killings after the army's alleged bombardment.

The recent massacre has provoked once again calls for foreign intervention in the country, a choice most of the world countries have for long shown reluctance to bring up.

Observers believe that last week's killings in Houla are the tipping point that has turned the table against the Syrian government and could be the spark that would call in foreign intervention.

The massacre has drawn strong worldwide condemnation and more than ten countries including the United States decided to expel Syrian diplomats following the massacre. 

On Wednesday, Syria's media, which reflects the government's thinking, said Syria would not be intimidated by this "unprecedented hysteria," and accused the West of deliberately escalating the situation to enflame a civil war.

It said the armed groups are getting bolder in influencing the world to boost their own goals, mainly in calling in foreign intervention.

French President Francois Holland said that France does not exclude a military intervention in Syria and that this topic is not out of the questions.

However, the White House on Tuesday said again that it did not believe the time was right for military intervention in Syria, and rejected calls by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for more direct steps to end Assad's rule.

"We do not believe that militarization, further militarization of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action. We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The Houla incident was used by Western effort as a tool in building up pressure on Russia to neutralize its pro-Syria stand.

Some observers believe that pressures have, to some extent, yielded fruits, citing what they called the positive turnabout in Russia's position when Moscow, in an unusual move, condemned the massacre and held both the Syrian government and the opposition accountable.

They contend that the Russian position on the Houla massacre is a symbolic change on the road of change.

Others, however, warned against attempts to inspire too much optimism counting on a recent statement by Russian Foreign Minister Seregy Lavrov in which he had said that he was astonished by recent appeals made by the head of the National Syrian Council, Burhan Ghalyoun, on the UN Security Council to endorse military intervention in Syria.

"This is a flagrant provocation for civil war," Lavrov said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov, meanwhile, said Wednesday that his country is "categorically against any intervention in the Syrian conflict from the outside, as this would only worsen the situation and would lead to unpredictable consequences both for Syria itself and the entire."

Gatilov added that Russia thinks any new UN Security Council pressure measures on Syria are premature, asserting that Russia will veto initiatives on foreign military interference in Syrian situation in the UN Security Council.

Since the endorsement of the plan on April 12 and the deployment of some 300 UN military observers on ground to monitor the cease-fire, violence in Syria has been dramatically increased and the situation seems to be spiraling out of control.

To protest the Houla massacre, some markets at the capital Damascus announced a general strike and footage posted on local websites showed closed shops at several markets, mainly the Hamidiya souk in the heart of the capital.