AMMAN (Reuters) – At least 109 people have been documented as killed and up to 400 more are likely to have died in an almost week-long offensive by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a rebellious Damascus suburb, opposition activists said.
If the accounts are confirmed, the killings in the mainly Sunni Muslim suburb of Jdeidet al-Fadel would amount to one of bloodiest episodes of the two-year-old uprising against Assad. Many of the dead were civilians, the activists said.
Veteran activist George Sabra, who was appointed yesterday as temporary president of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) umbrella group, said Assad’s militia, known as shabbiha or ghosts, paraded dead bodies on open trucks through the streets of the Mezze district of western Damascus.
“Instead of liberating their land, the so called leader of Syrian resistance, Bashar al-Assad, sent them his shabbiha and murderers to kill and massacre,” Sabra told a news conference in Istanbul.
Sabra, a Christian who spent eight years as a political prisoner under the iron fisted rule of Assad’s late father, described the killings as one of many “crimes against humanity” being committed in Damascus.
The SNC condemned “the deafening silence of the international community.”
“Syrians no longer expect an answer to our pleas for help or a chivalrous intervention from our brothers and neighbours. We no longer expect to be supported with the necessary arms to empower the Free Syrian Army to defend our people,” the SNC said in a statement issued from Istanbul.
