BEIRUT: Sunni insurgents have killed about 60 Shias in a rebel-held eastern Syrian town where President Bashar Al Assad’s agents had been trying to recruit and arm fighters for his cause, according to opposition sources yesterday.
The attack was another sign of how a revolt that began more than two years ago with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule is descending into sectarian bloodshed.
A video posted online by rebels, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla” showed dozens of gunmen carrying black Islamist flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.
“We have raised the banner ‘There is no God but God’ above the houses of the apostate rejectionists, the Shias, and the holy warriors are celebrating,” the voice of the cameraman says.
In the Damascus area, rebels reported that 27 of their comrades had been killed in an ambush near the town of Al Maraj.
Video uploaded by activists showed victims shot in the face or head. The camera scanned over several bloodied and dirt-coated corpses as men called out for help washing the bodies.
Musaab Abu Qutada, an opposition activist, said the men had been trying to break through a military blockade to bring supplies into rebel strongholds in suburbs of the capital.
Assad’s forces, backed by the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, won a significant victory by seizing the border town of Qusair last week and are now believed to be preparing offensives on rebel-held areas near Damascus and Aleppo.
Many of the fighters involved in the Hatla attack were said to be from the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Hardline Sunni groups often refer to Shi’ites as rejectionists because they deny the legitimacy of the Prophet Mohammad’s first successors.
“This is a Sunni area, it does not belong to other groups,” one fighter shouted in the video purportedly filmed in the town of Hatla in the eastern province of Deir Al Zor.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group that has reported abuses on both sides of the conflict, put the death toll in Tuesday’s attack at 60, saying most victims were pro-Assad Shia militiamen. Assad’s minority Alawite sect is rooted in Shi’ite Islam. Most rebels are Sunnis.
The Observatory said many Shia civilians, a minority in the mixed town of Hatla, had fled elsewhere in the province.
Rare warning
Lebanon’s army warned it will hit back against any new attacks from Syria after a helicopter gunship struck an eastern town yesterday, ratcheting up tensions ahead of US-British talks on the conflict.
A Syrian helicopter gunship fired two rockets on the centre of Arsal, a Lebanese town populated mostly by Sunni Muslims, wounding one person, Lebanon’s army said.
In a rare warning against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, it said Lebanese troops “took the necessary defensive measures to respond immediately to any similar violations”.
Most residents of Arsal, situated in the hills only 12km from the border with Syria, support the Sunni-led uprising against the Assad regime.
The Syria conflict erupted in March 2011 following a bloody regime crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests.
Since then, there have been several aerial and shelling attacks of Lebanon by both sides, but yesterday’s army statement was the first of its kind in the nearly 27-month conflict.
Lebanon’s poorly equipped army normally coordinates closely with the Syrian military.
Damascus dominated Lebanon politically and military for 30 years until 2005, and still exerts significant influence through its allies in the Mediterranean country.
The conflict in Syria has stoked Sunni-Shia tensions in the region, with Iran and Hezbollah supporting Assad, and Sunni-ruled nations such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar backing the rebels. Sunni militants have also poured in to help the rebels.
Dozens of Kuwaitis gathered outside the Lebanese Embassy in Kuwait late on Tuesday to protest against Hezbollah’s role in Syria. Protesters burned a picture of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a photo published in local media showed.
In Hatla, some opposition activists said the attack included summary killings and the burning of Shia places of worship.
Activist Karam Badran said only 20 people had been confirmed killed in Hatla but that another 20 had been taken hostage by the rebels.
He said the attackers’ main motive was not sectarian, but what he and the Observatory said were government attempts to recruit militiamen of all faiths in an area rebels had held for a year. Shias had not previously been harmed there, he said.
Agencies
