Fears of a massacre grow as Syrian troops target Hama

By Weedah Hamzah Jan 27, 2012, 12:45 GMT

Beirut - The rumble of tanks, thrusting into the Syrian central province of Hama, echoed Friday throughout the dissident province, in what seemed to be a fresh wide-scale military operation against a key stronghold of the opposition.

The opposition Friday warned that the attack would result in a massacre. Abu Omar, a Syrian activist based in the outskirts of Hama, told dpa the tanks were shelling residential areas and hospitals.

'Hundreds are trying to flee Hama, but in vain, as the security forces are besieging the cities and shooting at anything that moves,' he added.

'Bodies are piling up in the streets. The prospect of a new massacre in Hama looms,' said Abu Omar, a member of the Syrian Local committees, an opposition group organizing anti-government protests.

'There's nothing we can do to stop it, and the international community doesn't care,' Abu Omar - who goes by a pseudonym to protect his identity - said.

Hama, a province of 800,000 people, is known to be a conservative bastion of the country's Sunni Muslim majority.

The province was the scene of a massacre in 1982, when government forces crushed an Islamist uprising that challenged the rule of the then president, Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad.

At least 10,000 were killed in the massacre, according to opposition and human rights advocates.

A threatened escalation of violence in Syria risks plunging the country into a civil war between Sunni Muslims and the minority Alwaites, a Shiite Muslim offshoot to which the al-Assad family, which has ruled Syria for five decades, belongs.

The opposition has reported atrocities committed in recent months against Sunni Muslim families by Alawite members of the Syrian army.

The Syrian government has, meanwhile, accused 'terrorist gangs' of being Sunni radicals with alleged links to al-Qaeda; and of involvement in two bombing attacks that killed 98 people in the capital Damascus in December and January.

Sources close to the Syrian government told dpa on Friday that the Syrian regime is determined to quell the revolt in Hama 'no matter what the consequences will be.'

Images posted on YouTube by Syrian activists show long queues of tanks backed by large masses of military troops taking positions around Hama, which has been the site of daily anti-regime protests since the uprising began last March.

Shells were Friday raining down on Hama, mainly targeting the Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods of Karam al-Zeitoun and al-Hamidiyeh, activists said.

'Tanks are now trying to storm al-Hamidiyeh under a cover of heavy shelling,' one activist told dpa on condition of anonymity. The activist quoted families who managed to flee the province. They said the situation in Hama today is worse than in 1982.

Opposition figures and activists accused the regime of striking hard at a moment when Western and Arab countries are gearing up their efforts to draft a United Nations resolution against the Syrian regime.

'Hama is being collectively punished for its protests calling for the downfall of Bashar al-Assad,' Sheikh Anas Airout, a member of the Syrian opposition told dpa from Istanbul. 'The Syrian regime is committing crimes against humanity. Where are the free people of the world?' he questioned.

Under the title 29 Years Later, the Story Repeats Itself, The Syrian, an opposition website, warned that the price of freedom in Syria is turning out to be truly 'hefty.'

'What an awful feeling to wake up one day and find that what you lived back as a child, more than 29 years ago, is only happening again, in front of your own eyes. The same nightmare, the same killing, the same army, the same place ... and the same last name,' read a statement on the opposition website.