BEIRUT — A new video appears to show Syrian rebels killing a group of captured soldiers, spraying them with bullets as they lay on the ground. Human rights groups on Friday warned that the gunmen may have committed a war crime.
The video raises concerns over the rebels just ahead of a
major conference this weekend in Qatar at which the United States is
trying to unify the opposition under a new leadership. Washington and
its allies have been hesitant to give stronger support to the rebellion
in part because of worries over its multiple divisions and lack of
organization.
The killings took place Thursday during an assault
by rebels on the northern town of Saraqeb, the scene of heavy fighting
in past weeks between rebels and forces of President Bashar Assad’s
regime, according to an anti-regime activist organization, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights.
Rebels are now in full control of
Saraqeb after regime troops pulled back during Thursday’s fighting, the
Observatory said. That gives the rebels a strategic point on the main
highway linking Syria’s largest city Aleppo — which rebels have been
trying to capture for months — with the regime stronghold of Latakia on
the Mediterranean coast.
Human rights groups said they were trying
to confirm the video’s authenticity. The footage was consistent with
other Associated Press reporting in the area. The video is dated
Thursday, a day when the Observatory reported heavy attacks by rebels on
regime checkpoints at Saraqeb.
The amateur video, posted on
YouTube, shows a crowd of gunmen, apparently rebels, in what appears to
be a building under construction.
They surround a group of
captured men on the ground, some on their bellies as if ordered to lay
down, others sprawled as if wounded. Some of the men are in Syrian
military uniforms. “These are Assad’s dogs,” one of the gunmen is heard
saying of the captured men.
The gunmen kick and beat some of the
men, who appear terrified as one gunman shouts, “Damn you.” The exact
number of soldiers in the video is not clear, but there appear to be
around 10 of them.
Seconds later, amid the screams of those
captured, gunfire erupts for around 35 seconds and the men on the floor
are seen shaking and twitching, apparently from being struck by bullets.
The spray of bullets raises a cloud of dust from the ground.
The
video is titled “prisoners and dead from the regime military at the
Hmeisho checkpoint.” On Thursday, the Observatory had reported 12
soldiers killed at Hmeisho, outside Saraqeb, one of three major rebel
attacks on military checkpoints in the area.
Thursday saw heavy
casualties for the military around the country, with 83 soldiers killed
in attacks by rebels and clashes, the Observatory said. Half of those
were killed in Idlib province, where Saraqeb is located.
There
have been multiple allegations of massacres by both rebels and
government troops during Syria’s 19-month-old uprising, which has
plunged into outright civil war. At least 36,000 people have been killed
since it began in March 2011, according to anti-regime activists.
Thousands of people have been killed over the past few months, including
more than 500 last week during a four-day internationally-brokered
cease-fire that collapsed shortly after it went into effect.
On
Wednesday, the Obama administration said it would push for a major
shakeup in the opposition leadership so that it better represents the
fighters risking their lives on the frontlines. The opposition’s
political leadership, mostly in exile, has been criticized as
increasingly irrelevant and out of touch.
U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration was suggesting names and
organizations that should feature prominently in any new rebel
leadership that is to emerge from a four-day conference starting Sunday
in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
London-based Amnesty International
and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights both said they were
trying to confirm the video’s authenticity and determine the identity of
the gunmen.
“This shocking footage depicts a potential war crime
in progress, and demonstrates an utter disregard for international
humanitarian law by the armed group in question,” said Ann Harrison,
Amnesty’s deputy Middle East and North Africa program director.
UNHCHR
spokesman, Rupert Colville, said “the allegations are that these were
soldiers who were no longer combatants and therefore, at this point, it
looks very like a war crime.”
“Unfortunately this could be the
latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition
factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with
them, such as the (pro-government) shabiha” militia, he told reporters
in Geneva.
“The people committing these crimes should be under no
illusion that they will escape accountability, because there is a lot of
accumulated evidence, perhaps including this video,” he said.
Rami
Abdul-Rahman, who heads the London-based Observatory, asked how rebels
can demand rights at a time when they violate such rights.
Fadi
al-Yassin, an activist in Idlib province that includes Saraqeb, told The
Associated Press that rebels captured three checkpoints around the town
on Thursday after heavy fighting. Al-Yassin said he did not see the
video.
“Some soldiers surrendered, while others fought,” he said.
“It could be in individual act. There are rebels who lost loved ones or
suffered at the hands of the regime.”
Al-Yassin said captured
soldiers are usually well-treated by rebels who get information from
them then refer them to makeshift tribunals. Those who are innocent are
set free, he said.
As rebels gain more territory and a multitude
of militias, jihadi Islamic militants and criminals join the fight
against Assad, reports of serious human rights abuses committed by armed
opposition elements are on the rise.
Previous videos of rebels
executing soldiers and pro-Assad militiamen have fueled concerns that
opposition fighters are capable of brutality that matches that of the
regime they are seeking to topple — a charge that could badly damage the
rebellion’s ability to claim the moral high ground in the Syrian civil
war.
Also Friday state TV reported that two bombs went off minutes
apart in the Damascus neighborhood of Zahira al-Jadida wounding 16
people.
