BEIRUT: Graphic footage emerged Monday of what appeared to be around a dozen bloodied and disfigured corpses, including at least five children, killed in what activists described as a reprisal “massacre” by Syrian Shabbiha paramilitary forces in opposition-held areas in the central city of Homs.
 
Syrian state media said armed terrorists were responsible for the killings.The grisly reports surfaced as international efforts to halt the violence appeared to falter and divides within the Syrian opposition appeared to deepen over moves to militarize the ground campaign against President Bashar Assad’s forces.
 
News of the massacre began circulating late Sunday night with activist groups reporting that around 16 people including women and children had been killed with knives and blows by government-aligned Shabbiha forces in the Karm al-Zeytoun and Addawiyah neighborhoods.
 
The chief of the London-based Syrian observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdulrahman told The Daily Star Monday he had received the names of 43 people reportedly murdered in the incident, but said he could not confirm details or circumstances of activist accounts.
 
Activist photos and videos uploaded to Facebook and YouTube Sunday appeared to show the bloodied and disfigured corpses of at least five children lined up in a room. At least six dead adults were covered with blankets.
 
In one video of the same room, a man in the background shouts: “This is what they do to us, the Sunnis. The Sunnis are being wiped out, they are the ones who are dying at the hands of Iran and the Shiites.”
 
“We have several different accounts and we don’t know exactly how they were killed,” the observatory’s Abdul Rahman said.
 
“Some [activists] said they were killed inside homes, some said they were killed in other areas by Shabbiha.
 
“The only thing we know is that they were killed by Shabbiha.”
 
He said large numbers of people fled the area to nearby neighborhoods, fearing pro-government gunmen might carry out similar attacks.
 
The Daily Star could not verify the authenticity of the reports.
 
Homs is the Syrian city hardest hit by violence since the uprising against Assad’s regime began a year ago. Several Homs neighborhoods, including Karm al-Zeytoun were controlled by rebels and retaken by government forces earlier this month, prompting fears of reprisal killings.
 
It is one of several neighborhoods in Homs that have large populations both of Alawites – a Shiite offshoot that dominates the Damascus regime – and of Sunnis, who make up much of the opposition against it.
 
Syrian state media SANA carried videos of bodies of three different places in Karm al-Zeytoun and reported the armed terrorist groups had committed the “atrocious murders” ahead of Monday’s Security Council meeting “to elicit hostile stances against Syria.”
 
Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa division, Nadim Houry, said the group was following up the incident closely but had no independent verification of events.
 
“We are taking it very seriously and calling and Skyping everyone we can, because this is obviously a very serious issue ... but we haven’t been able to confirm details,” he said.
 
Houry said the case highlighted the need for immediate deployment and access by independent human rights monitors on the ground.
 
“We know there are terrible things happening, partly because of the number of extra refugees pouring in,” he said. “But what is actually happening we just don’t know, which is why getting independent access by independent monitors should be the top of U.N. and international agenda at the moment.”
 
United Nations investigators reported to U.N. Human Rights Council Monday that Syria’s government has subjected civilians to collective punishment and its forces stand accused of carrying out executions and mass arrests in Homs.
 
The panel’s chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, said the human rights and humanitarian situation was becoming bleaker day by day in Homs, Idlib, Hama, rural Damascus and Deraa and said perpetrators must face justice.
 
“What is clear is that civilians continue to bear the brunt of violent strife.”
 
Force used by the government against armed groups had often led to the “collective punishment of civilians,” Pinheiro said.
 
The findings come as a U.N. peace effort appeared to lose steam, with peace envoy Kofi Annan concluding Damascus meetings with Assad without an agreement to end the violence.
 
Annan met with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara Monday, following talks in Qatar earlier in the day. Annan is expected to meet members of the Syrian opposition in Ankara Tuesday.
 
With no apparent breakthrough in the standoff, there are increasing calls for military intervention in the crisis.
 
The opposition Syrian National Council made their first outright call for military intervention by Arab and Western governments Monday, including the establishment of a no-fly zone across all of Syria to protect civilians from regime forces.
 
The move followed an apparent group defection from the council by some members, who demanded the council take a stronger position on military intervention.
 
George Sabra, a spokesman for the SNC, told a news conference in Istanbul that the broad-based opposition group had decided to arm the Free Syrian Army and said some foreign governments were helping to send weapons.
 
“We demand military intervention by Arab and Western countries to protect civilians,” Sabra said, speaking a day before SNC representatives were due to meet Annan in Ankara.
 
“We demand establishment of secured humanitarian corridors and zones to protect the civilians. We demand implementation of a no-fly zone over entire Syria to prevent Assad from continuing massacres.”
 
He said the SNC had established a coordinating bureau to channel arms to the Free Syrian Army, with the help of foreign governments, but he declined to say where the bureau was located or which governments were involved.
 
Russia – which accuses Arab states of sending Al-Qaeda mercenaries into Syria, and which has twice blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution to end the violence in the country – appeared to soften slightly in their support for the Syrian president at a special council meeting on the “Arab Spring” uprisings Monday, but remained at loggerheads with the United States over who bore the brunt of responsibility for the violence. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Syrian authorities “bear a huge share of responsibility” but insisted opposition fighters and extremists including Al-Qaeda are also committing violent and terrorist acts.
 
“At this stage we should not talk about who was the first to start, but rather discuss realistic and feasible approaches which would allow [us] to achieve the cease-fire as a priority.”
 
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rejected any equivalence between the “premeditated murders” carried by Assad’s “military machine” and the civilians under siege driven to self-defense.
 
Clinton declared that the Security Council cannot “stand silent when governments massacre their own people, threatening regional peace and security in the process.”
 
With the deadlock continuing, activist group the Local Coordinating Committees said at least 63 Syrians were killed elsewhere Monday. The observatory also reported that eight members of the regular Syrian army were killed in clashes in Idlib, Deraa, Hama and Damascus suburbs.