The latest information to come out of Syria is that regime tanks are using children as human shields – and this from the United Nations, not activists.
In addition, Syrian Army troops are shelling the town of Deir el-Zour indiscriminately. At the time of writing, 10 people lay dead. Amateur footage broadcast yesterday showed panicked civilians trying to remove the bodies of those killed in the attack.
The United Nations also said there was evidence to show that children have been victims of detention, torture and sexual violence. The conflict in Syria began in March 2011 with mostly peaceful protests against the regime that were inspired by the Arab Spring wave of uprisings. But it has transformed into an insurgency as the opposition increasingly took up arms against a vicious government crackdown on dissent. Activists say more than 13,000 people have been killed.
Activist groups also reported clashes in areas including the central province of Homs, the northern regions of Idlib and Aleppo and areas around the capital Damascus and the southern province of Daraa.
The Observatory said troops kept up an offensive in an eastern coastal region where the US says President Bashar Assad’s forces may be preparing a massacre. The group said regime forces shelled Haffah and neighbouring villages in Latakia province yesterday for the eighth straight day and activists say the government has brought in helicopter gunships to aid their offensive, an increasingly common practice.
The United States had accused Assad’s government on Monday of using “new horrific tactics”. In what is becoming a brutally Orwellian tragedy, Syria’s Arab News Agency SANA reported that Syrian forces are still tracking down “terrorists”, who it said had attacked the residents of Haffah.
The UN’s special envoy in Syria has asked governments with influence to “twist arms” to halt the escalating violence in the country, his spokesman said yesterday.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is also working to convene a diplomatic meeting soon to discuss the situation in Syria amid worsening fighting between government troops and opposition forces. It has got to the point where it’s almost as if it’s not real any more. Libya, as we have stated on many occasions, was bad. But this is a horror movie unfolding every day. Thousands have been killed, and still no one knows the full truth of what is going on. What we cannot understand, and for the umpteenth time, is why it was ok for a resolution authorising force to be used against Libya’s Gaddafi and not ok against Syria’s Assad.