Smoldering buildings, looted shops, smashed cars and a strong stench of death greeted UN observers who entered the nearly deserted Syrian town of Haffa a day after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces overran it as part of a major offensive to recover rebel-controlled territories.
The monitors had been trying to get into the town for a week after fears were raised that a brutal assault by regime forces was under way. On Thursday, they found the main hospital burned, state buildings and an office of the ruling Baath Party in ruins and a corpse lying in the street.
“A strong stench of dead bodies was in the air,” the UN observers’ spokesperson Sausan Ghosheh said, adding that there was still fighting in some pockets of the mountainous town in the seaside province of Latakia.
Photo: AFP / SANA
The number of casualties was unclear, Ghosheh said, and it appeared likely that, as in the past, bodies had been removed or buried before the UN mission arrived.
The siege of Haffa, a Sunni--populated village, had become a focus of international concern because of fears the uprising against al-Assad is evolving into a sectarian civil war pitting his minority Alawite sect against the majority Sunnis and other groups. Recent mass killings in other Sunni-populated areas have fed those concerns.
For more than a week, Syrian troops have been sweeping through villages and towns in Syria’s northern, central, southern and seaside provinces, attacking rebel-held areas and opposition strongholds in what appears to be the largest offensive since an internationally-brokered cease-fire went into effect two months ago. The regime and the opposition have both largely ignored the April 12 truce.
The UN observers’ description of the smoldering ruins they found in Haffa suggested Syrian forces are using intense force to quell rebels, but it also indicated the rebels were determined to smash all symbols of the hated al-Assad regime, including state institutions.
“Most government institutions, including the post office, were set on fire from inside,” Ghosheh said in a statement. “Archives were burnt, stores were looted and set on fire.”
She said homes were broken into, while the ruling Baath Party headquarters was shelled, “and appeared to be the scene of heavy fighting.” The observers also found remnants of heavy weapons scattered through the town; it was not clear who they belonged to.
“The town appeared deserted,” she said.
On Tuesday, the unarmed UN monitors were prevented from entering Haffa by a crowd of angry civilians, apparently residents of nearby Alawite villages, who hurled rocks and sticks at the mission’s vehicles.
However, the Syrian government urged the observers to return after it announced on Wednesday that pro-al-Assad forces had “cleansed” Haffa of “armed terrorist groups” — the regime’s term for rebel fighters.
The UN observers’ visit to Haffa came hours after a suicide bomber detonated a van packed with explosives in a Damascus suburb, wounding 14 people and damaging one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines, according to witnesses and Syria’s state-run news agency.
It was not immediately clear whether the bomber intended to target the golden-domed Sayyida Zainab complex or a police station 15m away. Believed to house the remains of the granddaughter of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, the shrine attracts tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims from around the world.
UN observers have reported a steep rise in violence and a dangerous shift in tactics by both sides in Syria in recent weeks. Car bombings and suicide bombings have become increasingly common as the 15-month uprising against al-Assad becomes militarized. Most have targeted security buildings and police buses, symbols of al-Assad’s regime.
Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it appeared the Syrian regime was trying to implement a kind of scorched earth policy in the central city of Homs, which government forces have been heavily shelling for the past week. He said the use of tanks and attack helicopters to smash residential buildings and city infrastructure indicated they wanted to destroy areas, not just chase out rebels.
In Rastan, a rebel-held town that was heavily bombed on Thursday, two rights groups said the dead included Major Ahmad Bahbouh, an army defector who headed the town’s opposition military council. Activists said helicopters pounded the town, which has been held by rebels for months.
Activists say about 14,000 people have been killed since the uprising against al-Assad began in March last year.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s accusation that Russia has “dramatically” escalated the crisis by sending attack helicopters to Syria lost some steam on Thursday when the state department said the helicopters were actually refurbished ones already owned by the al-Assad regime.
However, US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted, that the nuance meant little, even as she refused to explain why the department did not divulge the information earlier.
“Whether they are new or they are refurbished, the concern remains that they will be used for the exact same purpose that the current helicopters in Syria are being used, and that is to kill civilians,” Nuland told reporters in Washington.
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