Syria massacre 2012: Channel 4's Alex Thomson under attack

Syria massacre 2012: Channel 4's Alex Thomson under attack

• Alex Thomson is now in the UK following attack at the weekend
• Blog was posted a day after at least 88 people were killed in single village
• Many of the victims were stabbed to death and at least 12 had been burned
• Kofi Annan admits six-point peace plan is not being implemented
  
• Pro-Assad forces 'behind attack' and 'danced round victims' bodies'
• UN monitors accused of ignoring 30 calls for assistance
  
• Syrian state TV says bodies have been found after attack on 'terrorists'
• Russian diplomat hints that Assad may flea to Moscow
  
• David Cameron says attack is 'sickening' and Syria needs to be isolated
  

By David Williams and Richard Hartley-parkinson

PUBLISHED: 19:50 EST, 6 June 2012 | UPDATED: 16:16 EST, 8 June 2012

Alex Thompson, Channel 4 News's chief correspondent, said he was driven out into the centre of no-man's land was a deliberate move by rebels to get them killed

A senior British journalist claims that Syrian rebels tried to lead him and his colleagues into a trap so they would be killed by government forces, to discredit the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Channel 4 News chief correspondent Alex Thomson said a group from the Free Syrian Army led his team into the line of fire because ‘dead journos are bad for Damascus’.

He said his vehicle was shot at before the team managed to ‘floor it back to the road we’d been led in on’.

He wrote: ‘Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind. We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s land.

'At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead-end. There was no option but to drive back out on to the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.

‘Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we re-appeared.

‘I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.’

His comments on the Channel 4 website came as clashes were reported near the centre of the Syrian capital, while UN monitors finally reached the hamlet of Mazraat al-Qubeir where up to 78 people, including women and children, were reportedly killed by militia loyal to Assad two days earlier.

Scroll down for video: Warning graphic content

Outcry: Syrians attend an anti-Assad protest yesterday on the outskirts of Idlib, an opposition stronghold

Witnesses have described ‘appalling scenes’ and ‘evidence’ of bloodshed, with reports of the smell of burnt flesh, torched buildings and human brains scattered around the small farming enclave, where about 150 people had lived.

However, by the time international observers arrived there were no bodies left in the area, and tracks apparently made by military vehicles were clearly visible. The team had come under fire, which prevented it from reaching the scene sooner.

The deaths of several journalists, including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times, apparently at the hands of Assad’s forces, has focused international outrage on the Syrian regime.

The incident recounted by Thomson, who is now back in the UK, happened last weekend.

Thompson was near al-Qusayr, near Homs, when he and his crew came under attack from government forces

He said his suspicions over the rebels were strengthened when, half an hour later, ‘our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side-street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead’.

He wrote: ‘In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers, what’s the big deal in sending  a van full of journalists into the killing zone? It was nothing personal.’

Yesterday peace envoy and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan met US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to discuss his plan to end more than a year of violence in the country, as Syrian troops reportedly launched a blitz on a rebel-held neighbourhood in the central city of Homs.

The developments came as a survey by YouGov showed substantial public support in Britain and the US for military action to secure a Libya-style ‘no-fly zone’ in Syria â€" but little backing for a ground assault.

According to activists, security forces launched a

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the attack 'sickening' and 'an unspeakable barbarity' while international envoy Kofi Annan blamed the failure of his peace plan on Assad.

He urged the divided U.N. Security Council to threaten 'consequences' if Assad doesn't stop the violence.

Increasingly impatient with the Syrian regime, Annan confirmed for the first time on Thursday that his six-point plan is not being implemented.

He said it's now time for the U.N.'s most powerful body and the wider international community to step up the pressure to ensure its implementation or start discussing other options to stop the bloodshed.

Activists and survivors say many victims had been shot in the head or had their throats slit. They accused militiamen of dancing over the bodies while singing pro-Assad songs.

Ten-year-old twins were said to be among the dead together with 35 members of one family.

Both the army and the pro-government shabiha militia were said to be stopping members of the 297-strong UN observer force from reaching the scene in the farming village of Mazraat al-Qubair, near the western city of Hama. It was unclear, however, who had opened fire on them with small arms.

According to activists, security forces launched a bombardment of the village, which has fewer than 30 houses, on Wednesday.

In the first detailed description of the horrific events, Laith Al-Hamwy, a young villager, said in a telephone interview that the shelling went on for several hours before militiamen from nearby areas entered the village.

He survived by hiding in an olive grove, but he said his mother and six siblings, including the ten-year-old twins, were killed. He added that villagers had tried but failed to contact UN observers as the massacre took place.

The massacre comes two weeks after the killing of more than 100 people in Houla.

UN investigators blamed pro-government gunmen for at least some of those deaths which triggered international outrage and a co-ordinated expulsion of Syrian diplomats from world capitals.

Video uploaded to YouTube apparently shows a woman victim of the massacre which happened in the central region of Hama

Around 20 young children were among the victims of the massacre which is reported to have been carried out by pro-Assad militiamen

The victims were either shot or cut down with knives and there are many burned bodies

Victims of the massacre are treated following the attack at Mazraat al-Qabeer

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Assad to hand over power and leave his country. She condemned the latest slaughter as 'simply unconscionable', saying: 'We are disgusted by what we are seeing.

'Assad has doubled down on his brutality and duplicity and Syria will not, cannot, be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic until Assad goes.'

Foreign Secretary William Hague warned that Syria is 'clearly on the edge' of a descent into deeper violence.

He said the peace plan brokered by international mediator Kofi Annan had 'clearly failed so far' and called for more action by Russia and China to press Assad's regime to end the violence.

MASS SLAUGHTER IN SYRIA

• May 25: At least 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women, killed in Houla.
• May 26: International outrage over massacre and rebel Free Syrian Army demanding air strikes on Assad's forces. UN monitors deploy in Houla.
• May 27: Damascus denies any responsibility in Houla massacre. Security Council condemns Damascus and says massacre 'involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood.'
• 87 killed across Syria, including 34 in Hama, human rights watchdog says.
• UN observer chief General Robert Mood says at least 108 people killed in Houla by 'shrapnel' and gunfire 'at point-blank range.'
• May 29: 98 people killed across Syria, including 13 'executed' in a new massacre at Assukar in eastern Deir Ezzor province.
  
• Top UN official says there are 'strong' suspicions that a militia loyal to Assad was behind the Houla massacre.
• May 31: Syrian inquest says the Houla massacre was the work of 'armed groups.'
• June 1: More than 250,000 people demonstrate nationwide.
• The UN Human Rights Council orders an independent probe into the Houla massacre.
• International leaders says they fear all-out civil war in Syria.
• June 2: Violence kills 89 people, including 57 soldiers - the military's dead liest single day during the uprising.
• June 3: Assad says his government faces a foreign plot to destroy Syria, blaming 'monsters' for the Houla massacre.
• June 6: U.S. gives its backing to the Arab League's proposal to invoke UN sanctions against Syria.
• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls for a full transfer of power in Syria.
• June 7: Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), led by Russia and China, says it opposes military intervention in the Middle East, forcing a 'handover of power' or using unilateral sanctions.
• Clinton says Assad must leave Syria.

In a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for peace, he said: 'Time is not yet at an end, it's clearly running out.'

Russia is said to have drawn up plans to provide longtime ally Assad, his British-born wife Asma, their children and key members of the regime with an escape route if they are forced to flee.

The exit strategy â€" officially denied by Moscow â€" came as David Cameron condemned the latest atrocity as 'brutal and sickening' and called for concerted action by the international community against the Assad regime.

In a clear message to Russia and China the Prime Minister said the whole world should show it wants a transition to a new regime in Damascus.

'We need to do much more to isolate Syria, to isolate the regime, to put the pressure on and to demonstrate that the whole world wants to see a political transition from this illegitimate regime and to actually see one that can take care of its people,' he said.

'It really is appalling, what is happening in that country.'

Syrian officials categorically denied claims that Assad loyalists were responsible for the Mazraat al-Qubair massacre, blaming 'terrorists', but there is a growing belief among Western diplomats in Damascus that militia elements are no longer under regime control.

Moscow has used its UN Security Council veto and other tools to protect Assad, who has given Russia a firm Middle East foothold and is a client for Russian weapons.

But Russia is under pressure to abandon its support or at least push Assad harder to adhere to a UN-backed ceasefire and Mr Annan's faltering peace plan.

Mr Annan told the UN general assembly that the time has come to determine what more can be done, stressing: 'We cannot allow mass killing to become part of every day reality in Syria.'

Mr al-Hamwy finally emerged from hiding to find the men - allegedly government troops - had set his home on fire. His family burned to death inside.  

'I saw bodies everywhere,' he said. 'Entire families shot or killed with sharp sticks and knives.'

‘(There were) burned bodies of children and women and girls were on the ground.

'I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre... people were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away.'

As the day went on, horrific details began to emerge from witnesses who had run for their lives as the slaughter took place.

Much of the detail about events at Al-Kubeir came from Mr al-Hamwy, who said that there had not been a 'single demonstration' against the Damascus regime in his village.

He described how the killing had begun at around 2pm local time on Wednesday, when tanks surround the farms.

'They (Syrian troops) started to shell Al-Kubeir, and did not stop until 8pm,' he said.

'They had guns and knives... They went there from nearby villages like Asileh, which is Alawite,' he said of the offshoot of Shiite Islam from which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family hails.

Mr al-Hamwy,said he had heard that the bodies of some young men from Al-Kubeir were taken to Asileh.

'I heard from people I know in that village that the shabiha militiamen drank and danced around their corpses, chanting songs praising Assad,' an emotional Laith claimed.

He said the murders were triggered when a farmer from the area wanted to enter Al-Kubeir but was turned away at a checkpoint between Asileh and Al-Kubeir.

'The farmer still managed to get into Al-Kubeir, and that's when regime forces started to deploy around the farmland,' Mr al-Hamwy said.

'We just can't take this any more... people are being killed, everything is a set-up, a lie. We only have God to rely on. Only God will help us.'

Denied access: UN observers (wearing blue helmets and berets) were shot at when they tried to access the massacre site

Activists from Hama also blamed the shabiha for the murders in the hamlet, where some 150 shepherds and farmers lived.

'I think they (the regime) used the thugs to deliver a message to the Syrian people that "either you are with us or against us",' Abu Ghazi al-Hamwi - not his real name - said via Skype.

'People who do not take sides are a target, because the regime is running out of options on how to stop the revolt. The regime tries to prove this is a war, not an uprising. And this is how they do it.'

He said Al-Kubeir was a Sunni enclave near Asileh and other Alawite villages.

'The violence is worst in areas where Sunni and Alawite live near each other. The regime is trying to break society in half,' he said.

Hamwi said he spoke to a survivor of the massacre, who pretended to be dead after being hit on the head with a stick.

'He played dead in order to survive. He could barely speak. He was in a very bad shape. You can imagine, he'd just lost 35 members of his family,' Hamwi said.

He also blamed UN observers for not heading to the site of the massacre quickly.

'When the army deployed there, and the shelling of around 20-25 houses started, activists called the UN monitors, who said they could not go because it was late in the day. For me that means they are just not professional,' Hamwi said.

Another Hama-based activist, Mousab al-Hamadi said: 'The regime wants to create a sectarian clash in the country. The regime wants to burn down the whole country.'

Hamadi said Syrians had lost faith in the international community.

'Everyone here is depending on the FSA (Free Syrian Army). The international community has failed' us, he said, referring to rebel forces.

Hamadi said there was no FSA presence in Al-Kubeir which he said had not been reported to have taken sides in the uprising.

'For 40 years we have lived under oppression. We know more massacres like this may happen. We are ready to go to the end, even if it means half of the Syrian people might get killed,' Hamadi said.

Peace envoy: Kofi Annan addresses the a session of the UN Assembly in New York today

Desperate: Mr Annan has devised a peace plan but the ceasefire has not held

Concerned: Families leave their homes in Taldou, near Houla, following last week's massacre -108 people were executed

Syrian state TV said troops found some bodies after attacking 'terrorists'.

Though there has been no independent confirmation of the latest massacre, news of the outrage in Houla emerged in a similar way and the details given by activists were later confirmed by UN ceasefire observers who are in the country.

It comes the day Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, is due to address the UN General Assembly and the Security Council on the progress of his six-point peace plan.

The reports could not be confirmed, but they come less than two weeks after 108 people were executed in Houla.

The Houla attack, in which nearly half the victims were children, triggered outrage in the international community, and increased pressure on President Bashar Assad.

VIDEO: Foreign Secretary William Hague warns that Syria is 'clearly on the edge' of further violence 

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