Thirteen bodies were found dumped on the street in the Syrian city of Homs today with gunshots to the head and blood drenching the pavement, a video by activists showed.
We’ve discovered a massacre today in Deir Baalba neighbourhood. Look at this, Muslims. Look at this,
Arabs,’ a man shouted as he walked towards the corpses, thrown on their backs or face down in pools of blood.
The victims, all young or middle-aged men, had their hands tied behind their back. Some were blindfolded.
Activists said they couldn’t tell who they were or why they were killed.
Some of them had traces of torture so they may have been detainees. There were no identity papers on the
bodies, so we are trying to find out who they are,’ said Saleem Qabbani, from the grassroots Local Coordination
Committees opposition group.
‘But by looking at their clothes, we believe many of them were from the neighbourhood. Deir Baalba is very
poor, people usually only have one or two sets of clothes so some of the activists here recognised the men by what
they were wearing,’ he said. ‘But they are still trying to figure out their names.’
Central Homs has been the bloody epicentre of the year-long revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
and the security forces he unleashed in a crackdown estimated to have killed more than 9,000 people, according
to the United Nations.
The city of one million has also been mired in sectarian violence in recent months, breeding a climate of
fear and hatred between neighbourhoods.
——————REUTERS