Syria's Treimsa Residents Say Killings Aimed to Ignite Religious War
Residents of Treimsa are adamant: government troops and their proxy shabiha militia slaughtered hundreds in their village last week to push Syria into a religious war.
Despite government assertions its troops targeted armed rebels and not residents during the military offensive, hatred is palpable everywhere in this small central Syrian village.
According to some witnesses, pro-government shabiha militiamen from nearby Alawite villages and towns helped troops carry out the killings of Sunni Muslim villagers.
The Alawites are an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam, a minority in Sunni-majority Syria, to which President Bashar Assad belongs.
"I don’t know if I can ever forgive them," says a young doctor who tells how he helped collect several bodies after Thursday's deadly attack.
The foreign ministry has denied any wrongdoing by the troops and insists they fought armed "terrorists". It says two civilians and 37 insurgents were killed and five homes where weapons were stored were targeted.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 150 people were killed in intense shelling and fierce clashes, in what it said could be the "biggest massacre" since the start of the uprising 16 months ago.
Some victims were killed execution-style, others as they tried to flee the violence while 30 bodies were found badly burned.
"I will never forgive," says a Treimsa resident, echoing the feeling of most of his co-villagers.
U.N. observers investigating the killings said they saw blood and evidence of the use of heavy weapons as well as burned out homes.
"On the basis of this preliminary mission, UNSMIS can confirm that an attack, using a variety of weapons, took place in Treimsa on July 12," said Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria.
"The attack on Treimsa appeared targeted at specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and activists. There were pools of blood and blood spatters in rooms of several homes together with bullet cases," she said.
The U.N. has so far failed to give a casualty toll.
An Agence France Presse correspondent who toured Treimsa saw signs that corroborate the U.N. findings that several types of weapons, including artillery, were used.
The local doctor as well as a rebel commander say Treimsa was targeted as part of a strategy by the authorities to ignite a religious war in Syria and exacerbate a conflict which first began with calls for democratic reform.
"Maybe it is because the village lies on the outskirts of a Alawite region," said the doctor.
"Assad's army has been shelling Sunni villages and town near Alawite districts every day for the past fortnight," said a rebel commander who calls himself Abu Ammar.
Rebel fighters agree as they sip hot, sweet tea, on small hills overlooking the farming lands of Treimsa.
"Treimsa is surrounded by Alawites. That's why," says one of the rebel fighters.
"Assad wants to eliminate all the Sunni," adds another.
"Assad wants a religious war," shouts a third.
In the Sunni town of Korzan a local political opposition chief tries to make sense of what happened in neighboring Treimsa.
"The regime wants to transform the revolution into a civil war but we reject that," says Abderrazak al-Hamdu.
"We have had friendly relations with the Alawites for decades and still do now... We forgive the Alawites who were not involved in the massacre," he adds.
But his military counterpart Taysseer Shaaban refuses to be accommodating.
"The Alawite villages around here are all shabiha dens," he says.
Source: Agence France Presse
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