Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN says
Entire families including women and children were killed in Syria’s coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists, the U.N human rights office said on Tuesday.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population were members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families – including women, children and individuals hors de combat – were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” U.N. human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said, using a French term for those incapable of fighting.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis…,” Al-Kheetan told reporters. In some cases, men were shot dead in front of their families, he said, citing testimonies from survivors.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk welcomed an announcement by Syria’s Islamist-led government to create an accountability committee and called for those investigations to be prompt, thorough, independent and impartial, the spokesperson added.
Source: Reuters
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