The UN said its monitors were fired at yesterday as they tried to reach the site of a new massacre that has ramped up fears of a drift toward all-out civil war in Syria.
In his strongest condemnation of the Syrian leader yet, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said President Bashar al-Assad had “lost all legitimacy”, but for all their cries of condemnation, Western powers appeared to have little idea of how to end the horrific violence.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 55 people were killed in Wednesday’s assault on Al-Kubeir, a small Sunni farming enclave surrounded by Alawite villages in Hama province.
Pro-regime militiamen swept through the farmlands slaughtering women and children, activists said, as the opposition reacted by urging more armed rebellion to bring down Mr Assad’s brutal and defiant regime.
The Al-Kubeir incident comes after at least 108 people were killed in a May 25-26 massacre near Houla, most of them women and children summarily executed.
Addressing a special session of the UN General Assembly hours after the slaughter at Al-Kubeir, Mr Ban condemned the latest attack as “shocking and sickening” and laid the blame on Assad.
“Any regime or leader who tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity,”he said.
The UN said its four-vehicle convoy was hit by small-arms fire in the nearby protest hub of Hama while en route to Al-Kubeir. A vehicle was damaged but the observers were unhurt.
“The patrol was forced to withdraw to a nearby government checkpoint,” said UN spokesman Farhan Haq. “The monitors were not able to enter Al-Kubeir today. They will try again tomorrow.”
Regime forces are accused of bombarding the tiny settlement before pro-militia thugs went on an afternoon killing spree, hacking, stabbing and shooting resid-ents. A resident from a nearby village said charred bodies of women and children still lay across Al-Kubeir yesterday.
“I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre ... people were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away,” said Laith, who gave only his first name.
“There are 49 confirmed and identified victims in Al-Kubeir,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Observatory. “Among the dead are 18 women and children.”
A video posted on YouTube showed bodies of several children, including babies, wrapped in blankets and white plastic body bags. Some had been charred beyond recognition.
Damascus denied responsibility and, as it has done repeatedly in the past, pointed the finger at “terrorists” backed by foreign forces.