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Syria s sickening massacre Mothers shot as they cradled babies and newlyweds executed side-by-side Daily Mail Online
Mothers shot as they cradled their babies, newlyweds executed side-by-side
- Human Rights Watch claims Syrian forces slaughtered 248 people in May
- They included unarmed civilians, women and children, a report reveals
- The details have been compiled from accounts from witnesses
- Syrian government said it only killed terrorists but 'mistakes possible'
Published: 12:02 EST, 16 September 2013 | Updated: 07:04 EST, 17 September 2013
Mothers and children, their bodies piled on top of each other, some still covering the baby they had died trying to protect.
Newlyweds executed side by side, and entire families slaughtered as they huddled together for protection, only to be shot, their corpses stacked high and then torched.
Details of a massacre, possibly one of the deadliest since the start of the conflict in Syria, have been released in a report released today by Human Rights Watch.
It claims Syrian forces brutally slaughtered 248 people in the coastal towns of al-Bayda and Baniyas in May.
The evidence is based on interviews with 15 al-Bayda residents and 5 from Baniyas
The chilling accounts are detailed in the 68-page report, 'No One’s Left’: Summary Executions by Syrian Forces in al-Bayda and Baniyas' and are based on interviews with 15 al-Bayda residents and 5 from Baniyas.
The details have been compiled from accounts given by people who saw or heard the forces detain and then execute their relatives. It lists 167 people killed in al-Bayda and 81 in Baniyas.
The report concludes that the overwhelming majority were executed after military clashes ended and opposition fighters had retreated.
It also warns that the actual number of fatalities is probably even higher, particularly in Baniyas, but that the area is difficult to access and account for the dead.
On the morning of May 2, Syrian government forces and pro-government militias clashed with opposition fighters in al-Bayda, a town of about 7,000 residents 10 kilometres from the coastal city of Baniyas.
The area is considered a Sunni antigovernment enclave within the largely Alawite and pro-government Tartous governorate.
Witnesses said that after the local opposition fighters retreated, at about 1pm, government and pro-government forces entered the town and searched the houses.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the forces who entered the two towns were a mix of regular government troops, members of the National Defense Force, a paramilitary group organised earlier in the year by the government from pro-government militias; and armed pro-government residents of neighboring villages
Three local residents who found the bodies after the forces had left al-Bayda, said that they executed all the members of one of the branches of the Bayasi family who were in their homes on May 2 – at least nine men, three women, and fourteen children –with the exception of a 3-year-old girl who they said was wounded by three bullets but survived.
One of the first responders to find the Bayasi bodies described how he found them: 'I was busy helping the surviving residents leave the town when the fiancé of one the Bayasi women asked me to go with him to check on her.
'We went to the house of Mustafa Ali Bayasi. We entered. We saw no one in the first room. As we entered further into the house, we got to a room where we found so many corpses. Mothers and children piled on top of each other.
'One mother was still covering her son. I thought he may have survived but as I turned her over, I saw that he had been also shot. My friend’s fiancé was also killed. We closed the windows of the house because we did not want any wild animals to come in.'
In Ras al-Nabe` residents also told Human Rights Watch that they located the bodies of entire families, including children, who were killed together.
