8 June 2012
Last updated at 16:53 GMT
Syria Qubair: Bloody traces of massacre seen in village
Unverified video released on Friday is said to show the city of Homs being shelled
A
BBC correspondent has seen evidence of human remains at the village of
Qubair in Syria, scene of a massacre reported on Wednesday.
Paul Danahar, who was travelling with UN monitors, found
buildings gutted and burnt in the deserted tiny village near the western
city of Hama.Violence continues across Syria, with reports of shelling in Homs and bomb attacks on security forces elsewhere.
The Red Cross has warned that 1.5 million people need humanitarian aid.
Condemning the Qubair massacre earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned of an imminent danger of civil war and the international peace envoy, Kofi Annan, has said his six-point peace plan is not being implemented.
Activists in Syria say at least 55 people were killed at Qubair while state media gave a figure of nine.
The opposition blamed it on militia allied to President Bashar al-Assad while the government accused "terrorists" of killing civilians.
UN monitors finally reached Qubair on Friday, with Paul Danahar accompanying them.
Annan plan dead? The militiamen accused of the killings at Qubair are known as shabiha, and are mainly from the minority Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad.
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The first house had been gutted by fire. The smell of burnt flesh still hung heavy on the air.
The scene in the next house was even worse. Blood was in pools around the room. Pieces of flesh lay among the scattered possessions.
Even butchering the people did not satisfy the blood lust of the attackers. They shot the livestock too.
The only clue as to where the bodies of the dead people had gone was etched into the tarmac of the road nearby. The tracks were made by military vehicles, said a UN observer.
At the scene
The scene in the next house was even worse. Blood was in pools around the room. Pieces of flesh lay among the scattered possessions.
Even butchering the people did not satisfy the blood lust of the attackers. They shot the livestock too.
The only clue as to where the bodies of the dead people had gone was etched into the tarmac of the road nearby. The tracks were made by military vehicles, said a UN observer.
The victims appear to be mostly Sunni Muslims, who make up the majority of the population.
Earlier, the opposition Syrian National Council gave a death
toll of 78 but another organisation, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, has a figure of "at least 55".Analysts say the major fear is that Syria falls victim to the kind of sectarian violence that tore Lebanon apart for decades.
Speaking at the UN in New York on Thursday, Mr Ban warned the danger of full-scale war was "imminent and real".
While the Annan plan remained the focus of peace efforts, he said, urgent talks were needed on how further to proceed.
The US is demanding decisive action, and Mr Annan is pushing for a contact group of key nations to raise pressure for an end to the violence.
Both China and Russia have twice blocked Security Council resolutions against Syria and have restated their opposition to outside military intervention in the conflict.
"Some say that the plan may be dead," Mr Annan said before meeting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington on Friday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says about 1.5 million people are in need of humanitarian aid in Syria.
Its aid workers report that food, medical care and shelter are in short supply and even bread has become hard to find, while more and more people are being driven from their homes.
'Homs shelled'
This photo shows a child injured in a blast in Damascus on Friday
While UN observers are deployed in Homs, their presence appears to have had little effect on the fighting, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from neighbouring Lebanon.
Government forces resumed shelling the Khaldiyeh area of Homs, the Syrian Observatory said.
The area was being "subjected to five to 10 shells a minute in the worst shelling since the revolution began", it added.
Other attacks were reported across the country
- A car bomb in the north-western city of Idlib killed two police officers and three civilians, wounding others, state TV said
- A car bomb in Rif Dimashq, near Damascus, killed three police officers and caused injuries, according to state TV
- A blast in the Damascus suburb of Qudssaya killed two security forces members, AFP news agency reports
The UN has 297 unarmed observers in Syria to verify the implementation of Mr Annan's plan.
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