Dozens of Shiites Reported Killed in Raid by Syria Rebels
By HANIA MOURTADA and ANNE BARNARD
Battalions of Sunni fighters stormed a village in eastern Syria,
reportedly killing at least 60 people, in a reprisal raid that
underscored the sectarian tone of the war.
By HANIA MOURTADA and ANNE BARNARD
Published: June 12, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — At least 60 Shiite Muslim residents of a village in
eastern Syria were killed in a reprisal raid by rebels, the government
and opposition figures said Wednesday, the latest in a string of
massacres underscoring the increasingly sectarian nature of the Syrian
conflict.
Multimedia
Related
-
U.S. Blacklists Fund-Raisers for Hezbollah (June 12, 2013)
-
As Syrians Fight, Sectarian Strife Infects Mideast (June 2, 2013)
A Syrian official called the killings, which were reported to have taken
place on Tuesday in Hatlah, a village in the oil-rich province of Deir
al-Zour, a massacre of civilians. Anti-government activists said most of
the dead were pro-government militia fighters who had attacked rebels
one day earlier. But some of the activists nonetheless condemned the
Hatlah attack as a destructive act of revenge that showed the
powerlessness of moderates among the mostly Sunni rebels to rein in
extremists.
What was not in dispute was that several battalions of Sunni rebels,
including members of extremist Islamist groups, stormed the village and,
in video posted online by anti-government activists, could be seen
setting houses on fire as they shouted sectarian slogans, calling
Shiites dogs, apostates and infidels.
“This is your end, you dogs,” a man off camera said as he panned across
what he said were the corpses of “pug-nosed” Shiites, including one with
what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head.
“We have raised the banner of ‘There Is No God but God’ over the houses
of the rejectionist Shiite apostates,” one fighter chanted in another
clip as a black cloud billowed above the village and jubilant gunmen
brandished black flags often used by the extremist Al Nusra Front and
other Islamist fighting groups.
“Here are the Jihadists celebrating their storming of the rejectionists’
houses! The Shiite rejectionists!,” the fighter added. Some extremist
Sunnis refer to Shiites as rejectionists because the sect arose from a
group that rejected the early successors of the prophet Muhammad in the
seventh century.
The Syrian conflict began as a popular uprising demanding political
rights, but gradually has taken on a more sectarian tone. As the
conflict became militarized, with the government cracking down on
demonstrators, some of its opponents, mostly Sunni army defectors and
others, took up arms. Sunni jihadists from across the region have also
joined the fight, and extremist groups have been able to count on
financing from like-minded private donors, making them increasingly
influential on the battlefield.
Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iraq have also entered Syria to defend
Shiite shrines and fight alongside a government they see as protecting
their interests.
Sectarian tensions further grew in recent weeks as the Syrian army,
backed by fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite mlitant group,
fought to recapture the Syrian town of Qusayr along the border with
Lebanon.
The attack in eastern Syria came a week after those forces routed rebels in Qusayr.
President Bashar al-Assad, who is from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of
Shiite Islam, draws some of his support from minority groups that fear
reprisals or oppression from extremists among the country’s majority
Sunnis.
The Syrian government has created paramilitary fighting groups across
the country, arming residents to protect their areas. The government has
heavily recruited for the militias in Alawite, Shiite and Christian
areas. Some of the militias have been accused of massacring Sunni
civilians, as in the May attacks in the coastal towns of Bayda and
Banias.
Some opponents of Mr. Assad accuse him of turning to sectarian slogans
and playing on minority fears. A video said to have been leaked from a
recent recruiting session in the largely Shiite village of Nabl in the
northern province of Aleppo, for example, showed a crowd of recruits
praising Hussein, a central figure in Shiism, and the recruiter
promising, “We will fight under the banner of Hussein.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
a Britain-based anti-government watchdog group with a network of
contacts across Syria, said the victims of the Hatlah massacre were
mostly from a pro-government militia. A rebel spokesman, Omar Abu Layla,
said that the fighters had captured militiamen who told them they were
planning to attack rebel leaders.
But a government official was quoted by The Associated Press as saying
that the rebels had “carried out a massacre against villagers in which
older people and children were killed.”
In Kuwait, a Sunni sheik who has used sectarian invective against the
Assad government appeared to applaud the “slaughter” of Shiites in
Hatlah and to threaten the Shiite villages of Nabl and Zahraa in Aleppo
province, in a video noted by Hassan Hassan, a columnist for the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National, who is from eastern Syria.
“Today, we took the village of Hatlah and we slaughtered the bad with
knives,” the sheik, Shafi al-Ajmi, said in the video. “Like you
slaughtered our women and children in Qusayr, we slaughtered one of your
symbols” – a man he referred to as “the bad Hussein.”
“As for tomorrow,” he added, “we have a date with Nabl and Zahraa.”
“Every day they will have new deaths and injured,” the sheik said,
adding, in a reference to Hezbollah, “I swear that Syria will be a grave
for the devil’s party.”
Ragheb Bashir, an anti-government activist from Deir al-Zour who is
currently in Turkey, condemned the attack on the Shiites there.
“Such attacks should be against the regime and not against each other,”
he said in a telephone interview, adding that he had visited Hatlah many
times since the uprising began and that the small Shiite population had
grown increasingly anxious.
“They became armed because they were afraid,” he said. “My advice was, ‘do not attack us, and we won’t either.'”
He added, “Since the moderate Syrians were left powerless, we will see
more such attacks.” He was referring to the reluctance of the United
States and others among the Syrian uprising’s international backers to
provide direct military support.
Much as the Syrian conflict is fueled by political and strategic
rivalries across the region, the fighting in Deir al-Zour springs from
local conflicts that have a sectarian aspect but are also economic and
political, residents said.
In the 1990s, some people in the overwhelmingly Sunni province,
including hundreds in Hatlah, converted to Shiism, as Mr. Assad’s father
and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, drew closer to Shiite-led Iran. Some
saw the converts as seeking financial and social advantage, while others
said they came from tribes that were originally Shiite and were
returning to their roots.
There was “dormant jealousy” against Shiites who tended to be wealthier,
Mr. Bashir said. Tensions have also grown in the area over control of
oil fields, he said.
In recent weeks, the government organized one of its new militias,
formally known as the National Defense Forces, in Hatlah, drawing only
from the 600 Shiites in the village of 12,000, said Mr. Abu Layla, who
identified himself as a spokesman for the Eastern Syria chief of staff
of the Free Syrian Army, the Western-backed rebel umbrella group.
On Monday, hundreds of the militiamen launched a surprise attack on a rebel post, killing four, activists said.
After that, thousands of Sunni rebels, including members of the Free
Syrian Army and the Nusra Front, attacked the village, according to the
Observatory and Mr. Abu Layla.
Mr. Abu Layla said they surrounded the village and used loudspeakers to ask people to surrender.
Government forces stationed in a nearby military airport unleashed an
artillery barrage on the battalions, killing two rebels and injuring a
dozen, the Syrian Observatory said, but the rebels managed to seize
control of the village within hours.
Mr. Abu Layla said that 55 men were killed during the clashes.
Hundreds of Shiite fighters fled seeking refuge in the government-held
village of Jafra located across the Euphrates River, the Syrian
Observatory said. COPY http://www.nytimes.com/
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário