Where TF are the flotillas?

amir

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Feb 17, 2012
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Syria Crisis: At Least 50 Killed In Homs
Reuters | Posted: 05/25/2012 3:56 pm Updated: 05/25/2012 5:00 pm






BEIRUT, May 25 (Reuters) - At least 50 people, including 13 children, were killed when Syrian forces attacked the town of Houla in Homs province on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists said.

Activists said clashes erupted in the town when Syrian forces opened fire on a protest against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and killed one protester.

"The soldiers are shelling Houla right now, the casualties are huge," said activist Ahmad Kassem. He said opposition fighters fired back, inflicting casualties on the soldiers and destroying five tanks.
Houla is a cluster of four villages and towns north of Homs.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Tim Pearce)
 
Dey at it again...
:eek:
Syrian troops shell Houla; U.N. chief warns regime
31 May`12 – Syrians fled a new round of government shelling Thursday in the area where more than 100 people were massacred last week, activists said, as the U.N. chief pleaded with the regime to stop its attacks.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees activist groups said government troops unleashed heavy machine guns and mortar shells in Houla, a collection of poor farming villages in the central Homs province. A young man also was killed by sniper fire, both groups said. The assault came nearly a week after 108 people, many of them women and children, were killed in the area. Activists said government forces first shelled the area on Friday, then pro-regime fighters known as shabiha stormed the villages. The Syrian government denied its troops were behind the killings and blamed "armed terrorists."

Facing international outrage over the killings, Damascus said it would conduct its own investigation into the Houla deaths. It was expected to announce the findings at a news conference later Thursday. Syria also announced that special prayers for the victims would be held at Syrian mosques across the country on Friday. The Houla massacre was one of the deadliest incidents since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime started in March last year. The U.N. said several weeks ago that more than 9,000 people have been killed in the past 15 months while activists put the number at about 13,000. Persistent bloodshed despite a cease-fire agreement has raised pressure on the international community to act.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton laid out the clearest case yet for why the Obama administration is reluctant to intervene militarily in Syria even as the U.S. expressed revulsion over the Houla killings. Clinton said Russia and China would have to agree before the U.S. and other nations engage in what could become a protracted conflict in support of a disorganized rebel force. "We're nowhere near putting together any type of coalition other than to alleviate the suffering," Clinton told reporters Thursday after meeting with top officials in Denmark, a key contributor to last year's NATO-led mission against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

Thursday's shelling appeared focused on the Houla village of al-Tibeh. The Observatory reported that residents were fleeing to nearby towns and villages "fearing a new massacre" as the area again came under fire. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon called on Syria to stop the bloodshed. Nearly 300 U.N. observers have been deployed around Syria to monitor a cease-fire that was supposed to go into effect on April 12 as part of a peace plan negotiated by international envoy Kofi Annan. But the plan has unraveled amid daily visit and the images from the Houla massacre caused outrage to spike.

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11-year-old played dead to survive Syria massacre
31 May`12 — When the gunmen began to slaughter his family, 11-year-old Ali el-Sayed says he fell to the floor of his home, soaking his clothes with his brother's blood to fool the killers into thinking he was already dead.
The Syrian boy tried to stop himself from trembling, even as the gunmen, with long beards and shaved heads, killed his parents and all four of his siblings, one by one. The youngest to die was Ali's brother, 6-year-old Nader. His small body bore two bullet holes — one in his head, another in his back. "I put my brother's blood all over me and acted like I was dead," Ali told The Associated Press over Skype on Wednesday, his raspy voice steady and matter-of-fact, five days after the killing spree that left him both an orphan and an only child.

Ali is one of the few survivors of a weekend massacre in Houla, a collection of poor farming villages and olive groves in Syria's central Homs province. More than 100 people were killed, many of them women and children who were shot or stabbed in their houses. The killings brought immediate, worldwide condemnation of President Bashar Assad, who has unleashed a violent crackdown on an uprising that began in March 2011. Activists say as many as 13,000 people have been killed since the revolt began.

U.N. investigators and witnesses blame at least some of the Houla killings on shadowy gunmen known as shabiha who operate on behalf of Assad's government. Recruited from the ranks of Assad's Alawite religious community, the militiamen enable the government to distance itself from direct responsibility for the execution-style killings, torture and revenge attacks that have become hallmarks of the shabiha. In many ways, the shabiha are more terrifying than the army and security forces, whose tactics include shelling residential neighborhoods and firing on protesters. The swaggering gunmen are deployed specifically to brutalize and intimidate Assad's opponents.

Activists who helped collect the dead in the aftermath of the Houla massacre described dismembered bodies in the streets, and row upon row of corpses shrouded in blankets. "When we arrived on the scene we started seeing the scale of the massacre," said Ahmad al-Qassem, a 35-year-old activist. "I saw a kid with his brains spilling out, another child who was no more than 1 year old who was stabbed in the head. The smell of death was overpowering."

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BEIRUT, May 25 (Reuters) - At least 50 people, including 13 children, were killed when Syrian forces attacked the town of Houla in Homs province on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activists said.

Activists said clashes erupted in the town when Syrian forces opened fire on a protest against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and killed one protester.

"The soldiers are shelling Houla right now, the casualties are huge," said activist Ahmad Kassem. He said opposition fighters fired back, inflicting casualties on the soldiers and destroying five tanks.
Houla is a cluster of four villages and towns north of Homs.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Tim Pearce)

If you go back and compare the world outrage and amount of news media coverage comparing the israel stoppage of the invading gaza flotilla a few years back, the demonstrations, protests, etc., around the world, and in major cities in the US - particularly by groups pretending to be human rights groups or anti-war ones, and look at their silence today given these massacres of some 15,000 people, one can only be astounded.

Compare the NYT coverage, or the relentless demonstrations by various far left groups like international answer, code pink, etc...Where are the anti-syrian protests? Where is the talk of freedom flotillas to rescue women and children, etc?

All pretty telling about what their agendas really are...
 

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