The little girl lies on her back, arms splayed, a bloody smear across her throat. Next to her is a woman, slumped on her stomach, her back a mass of congealed blood. On the child’s other side, a bearded silver-haired man lies with his eyes wide open, as though confronting his killers. His chest is so bloodied it is impossible to tell how he died. These are images sent from the impoverished Sunni farm village of Tremseh, in central Syria, the latest massacre site that has prompted cries of outrage — but no action — from the West, on what rebels call one of the worst single days of carnage since the uprising began nearly 17 months ago.
The head of the UN’s monitoring mission in Syria accused the Assad regime of using helicopter gunships and tanks to shell the town in violation of a UN-brokered peace plan. An opposition group claimed the agreement had been followed by a brutal attack from pro-government militias on the ground.
The Local Coordination Committees in Syria said forces of the army shelled the town, and the shabiha — pro-government death squads — then stormed the town, killing people, and burning the wounded and bodies of the dead.
In phone calls and messages to the media, local people and opposition members said between 100 and 220 people had been slaughtered in the village of 6,000. And that some of the residents who fled were chased down and butchered with knives.
The Syrian government said the killings resulted from a clash with “terrorists” who threatened residents of the town.
Differing accounts of the violence, and casualty figures, underscore the difficulty of obtaining accurate information in a country that has been under almost total lockdown by President Bashar al-Assad. He has allowed UN observers into the country, but denied them immediate access to sites of conflict.
A video of Tremseh, posted Friday, showed a mass grave, three bodies wide and about 10 bodies long, and the dead being hastily interred in blistering heat. Mohammed, a village resident, told the New York Times that he had buried 170 people from Tremseh, and sent another 60 bodies to their nearby villages.
The central province of Hama, where Tremseh is located, is home to both Sunnis and Shiite-linked Alawites, a minority to which the ruling Assad family belongs.
On Friday, UN observers close to Tremseh said the Syrian air force had attacked “populated urban areas on a large scale” and it had recorded more than 100 explosions in an “ongoing military operation.”
But it was not possible to immediately determine the numbers of combatants and civilians killed. The British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that dozens of the dead were opposition fighters. Other opposition members described it as wanton “ethnic cleansing” by the Assad regime.
The uncertainty about the mounting violence in Syria — and the fragmented nature of the opposition — makes the possibility of international action against Assad more difficult. Russia, a powerful UN Security Council member, insists that Syria is battling armed groups, rather than carrying out a ruthless crackdown on protesters.
But the Middle Eastern social media Friday were sizzling with criticism of Moscow, which has blocked tougher sanctions against Syria along with any suggestion of military action. Critics also blamed the UN and peace envoy Kofi Annan for failing to broker a deal that would force Assad out of power.
Both Annan and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have condemned the attack on Tremseh, and Annan said he was “shocked and appalled” at the use of heavy weapons. The Security Council is debating a new resolution that would extend or end the observer mission after July 20.
Ban accused the government of violating UN resolutions by using heavy weapons and urged the Security Council to take “collective action” against the “outrageous” escalation of violence.
But the Western countries on the 15-member council are pushing for sanctions on Syria under Chapter VII of the UN charter, which allows for the use of force, and want a 10-day deadline for Assad to comply. Russia calls that “a red line,” and opts for an extension of the existing mission.
“Russia’s image in the Middle East has suffered from this, but they don’t seem to care any more,” says Mark Katz of George Mason University, who has just returned from Moscow. “Syria has become a domestic issue in Russia. If Assad falls, they would prefer to be defiant than to give in to the U.S.”
Canada, which is not on the Security Council, also backs the Western plan to be tougher on Assad. “The international community cannot stand by and allow these atrocities to continue,” said Foreign Minister John Baird on Friday.
But Russian stonewalling also gives Washington an excuse for avoiding a move toward military intervention.
“There’s no groundswell of support for it except in New York conservative policy salons,” said Jeffrey Laurenti of the Washington-based Century Foundation. “I think the general electorate’s indifference will prevail.”
However, reports of appalling civilian suffering are fuelling the debate on should be done about Syria’s spiralling conflict, in which estimates say between 9,000 and 17,000 have died since March 201l. Anxiety has also risen about the threat of a civil war that could spill over the borders to other volatile countries.
But how to stem the violence remains an open question.
“To use a set of tools for stabilization, you must have a willing and able opposition side who can engage in a meaningful political process, so you can pressure the government to go along,” says Claude Bruderlein, who heads the program on humanitarian policy and conflict research at Harvard University. “There is a lot of reservation about the fragmentation of the opposition.”
The Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of exiled opposition members, has urged strong action against Assad, who met with Annan earlier this week and agreed to continue discussions that could bring about a ceasefire under Annan’s six-point peace plan.
But Assad also said that he would halt the use of heavy weapons — and in the wake of the Tremseh attack, few have any expectation that the accord is aimed at anything more than stalling.
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