Large-Scale Killings Reported in Restive Syria City

[alp227]

Source: NYT

Syrian rights groups reported a spate of government-sanctioned killings in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, with witness accounts of at least 50 dead there in one of the most violent episodes in the nine-month-old uprising against the government.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said in a posting on its Facebook page that dozens of the dead, apparent kidnap victims taken from anti-government strongholds in Homs, had been dumped in the streets of the city on Monday night. It said the spasm of killings marked “one of the deadliest days since the start of the Syrian Revolution.”

The accounts conveyed from Homs, an epicenter of resistance to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, came against a backdrop of rising international pressure on Mr. Assad. A prominent Syrian political opposition group met Tuesday for the first time with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to discuss a post-Assad future in Syria. Mr. Assad is also facing a crisis with the Arab League, which has slapped economic sanctions on Syria and demanded that Mr. Assad allow observers into the country to assess the violence.

Angered and embarrassed by the Arab League actions, Syrian officials said Monday they would only allow the observers in if the sanctions are dropped first.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/large-scale-killings-reported-in-restive-syria-city.html