SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has denied ordering his troops to kill peaceful demonstrators, telling the US television channel ABC that only a “crazy” leader kills his own people.
Assad is under mounting international pressure, including a threat of sanctions from the Arab League, over a crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests in which the United Nations says more than 4,000 people have been killed.
“We don’t kill our people … No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person,” ABC’s website yesterday quoted Assad as saying in a recorded interview.
“Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government, not the vice versa,” Assad said.
Syrian activists say around a quarter of the more than 4,500 deaths they have recorded in nine months of protest have been among the security forces. Most foreign media have been excluded from Syria, making it hard to verify events independently.
The Arab League has threatened to impose sanctions on Syria unless armed forces are verifiably withdrawn from towns and cities and a political dialogue is opened with opposition representatives. Major Western powers as well as neighbours Turkey and Jordan are calling on Assad to step down.
Up to 50 people were killed in Homs on Monday, but details about what happened in Syria’s third-largest city only came to light today with reports of retaliatory attacks pitting members of the Alawite sect against Sunnis.
The sectarian violence is a dire development in Syria, and one that opposition members say plays directly into the regime’s hands.
Dozens of bodies were dumped in the streets of a Syrian city at the heart of the country’s nine-month-old uprising, a grim sign that sectarian bloodshed is escalating.
The discovery in the streets of Homs came as the United States stepped up pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad to end its crackdown on the anti-government protests.
Sectarian violence is a dire development in Syria, and one that opposition members say plays directly into the regime’s hands.
Since the uprising began, Assad portrayed himself as the lone force who can ward off the radicalism and sectarianism that have bedevilled neighbours in Iraq and Lebanon.
Opposition figures have accused Assad’s minority Alawite regime of trying to stir up trouble with the Sunni majority to blunt enthusiasm for the uprising.
“It was an insane escalation,” activist Mohamed Saleh said by telephone from Homs. “There were kidnappings and killings in a mad way. People are afraid to go out of their homes.” Thirty-four of the dead were shot execution-style, their bodies dumped in a public square, according to Saleh and others who monitor the violence, including the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A Homs government official confirmed only that 43 bodies were found on Monday in Homs.
With over 4,000 people dead across Syria in the uprising, the conflict is no longer just a matter of government forces firing on peaceful protesters looking to topple Assad’s autocratic regime.
The government also has been facing strong resistance from army defectors who have taken refuge in Homs. But sectarian overtones are building as well, because the uprising has unearthed long-simmering grievances that are now exploding into violence.
The Arab League has piled on economic sanctions to try to end the violence, adding to measures already taken by the US, European Union, Turkey and others.
