Residents of a town in central Syria are fleeing after shelling attacks by government forces killed more than 90 people, activists and relatives in neighbouring Lebanon said on Saturday. "We are leaving now," Ahmed Kassem quoted his father as telling him by phone, when he finally reached him after hours of failed attempts.
"We have no time to waste. The shelling may start again after the UN observers leave," the father told his son. The family live in the village of Taldo in Houla, where activists said government forces committed one of the ugliest massacres in the 15-month uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
"We and other families are walking to a safe area in Houla and then we will decide where to go," the father told Kassem, who has been living in Lebanon. Hundreds of shells exploded in Taldo shortly after anti-government mass protests after midnight on Friday. "Our house was directly hit and damaged. But thank God, my parents were among the lucky survivors," Kassem told dpa.
"They took refuge into a nearby field and were able to get back to the house to collect some belongings and leave." Houla, 200 kilometres north of the Syrian capital Damascus, is an area of four small villages in the rebellious province of Homs. Mosque leaders in the Houla area urged residents to flee as soon as possible, fearing that more attacks would follow.
"Entire families were dead. The cemetery in Taldo is full of bodies of children," he quoted his mother as telling him by phone. Kassem, 45, said his only brother was killed by Syrian forces during an anti-regime protest in Houla. Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least 90 people, including 23 children, were killed in the onslaught, prompting a "mass exodus" from Houla.
Other opposition groups have put the figure at 110. Video footage posted on YouTube showed bodies of dead children with shrapnel wounds on a floor to the sound of wailing. Activists based in Syria said some of the families who had lived on the outskirts of Houla, mainly in Taldo, were executed by Syrian soldiers and pro-government militiamen after eight hours of shelling attacks.
The reports could not be independently verified. Kassem, who supports the revolt against al-Assad, criticised opposition activists for claiming that the dead children were slaughtered. "I am not trying to defend anyone. But they have to report the truth. All who were killed in Houla died due to the heavy shelling," he said.
United Nations observers, overseeing a fragile cease-fire in Syria, Saturday visited Houla after the reported massacre. There was no official Syrian comment. But Omran al-Zoghby, a pro-government politician, accused "terrorists" of killing civilians and blaming the killings on the government to defame the Syrian regime. "These terrorists promote an agenda aimed to push the Syrian crisis into a dark tunnel," he told Syrian state television. The Syrian government has frequently blamed "armed terrorist groups" backed by Arab and foreign powers for the violence.
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