BLACKEAGLE
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UNITED NATIONS The UN said its monitors in Syria were fired upon Thursday as they tried to reach the site of a new massacre that has ramped up fears of a drift toward all-out civil war.
In his strongest condemnation of the Syrian leader yet, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said President Bashar Assad had lost all legitimacy.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 55 people were killed in Wednesdays assault on Al Kubeir, a small Sunni farming enclave surrounded by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama.
Pro-regime militiamen swept through the farmlands, slaughtering women and children, activists said, as the opposition reacted by urging more armed rebels to bring down Assads brutal and defiant regime.
Al Kubeir incident comes after at least 108 people were killed in a May 25-26 massacre near the central town of Houla, most of them women and children who were summarily executed.
Addressing a special session of the UN General Assembly hours after the slaughter in Al Kubeir, Ban condemned the latest attack as shocking and sickening and laid the blame squarely on the Assad regime.
The trail of blood leads back to those responsible, he said. Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.
The UN said its four-vehicle convoy was hit by small arms fire in the nearby protest hub of Hama while en route to Al Kubeir. A vehicle was damaged but the observers were unhurt.
The patrol was forced to withdraw to a nearby government checkpoint, said UN spokesperson Farhan Haq. The monitors were not able to enter Al Kubeir today. They will try again tomorrow.
Regime forces are accused of bombarding the tiny settlement of Al Kubeir before pro-militia thugs went on an afternoon killing spree, hacking, stabbing and shooting residents.
A resident from a nearby village told AFP the charred bodies of women and children still lay across Al Kubeir on Thursday.
I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre... people were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away, said Laith, who gave only his first name for fear of retribution.
There are 49 confirmed and identified victims in Al Kubeir, the majority of them from Al Yateem family, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based observatory.
Among the dead are 18 women and children, he said, adding that six other people were also killed on Wednesday in a village near Al Kubeir.
Earlier reports from opposition groups had put the death toll at between 87 and 100.
A video posted on YouTube showed bodies of several children, including babies, wrapped in blankets and white plastic body bags. Some were charred beyond recognition.
Damascus denied responsibility and, as it has done repeatedly in the past, pointed the finger at terrorists backed by foreign forces.
A terrorist group committed a heinous crime in the Hama region which claimed nine victims. The reports by the media are contributing to spilling the blood of Syrians, state media said.
The White House condemned the outrageous targeted killings of civilians and said that, coupled with the regimes refusal to let UN observers verify the reports, it was an affront to human dignity and justice.
The US is pushing for a full transfer of power in Syria but is coming up against strong opposition from Russia and China, whose leaders fear foreign intervention could set dangerous precedents for their own countries.
Expressing horror at the latest massacre in Syria, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan told the major powers that it was time to threaten consequences if Assad does not act to halt the strife.
The international envoy, who secured Assads agreement to a six-point peace plan, grimly told the UN General Assembly: I must be frank and confirm that the plan is not being implemented.
He warned that without change in Syria, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war.
Annan was due to brief the UN Security Council later in the day and was expected to call for the creation of a contact group bringing together the Western powers and Russia and China in a bid to force Assad into talks.
The envoy is considering proposing that Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia join the permanent members of the Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the US in the group, The Washington Post and Le Monde reported.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the latest atrocity simply unconscionable, and said a solution to the crisis required a ceasefire, a transfer of power and the formation of a representative interim government.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed there would be no UN Security Council mandate for outside intervention in Syria, indicating Moscow would use its veto to block any military action.
Russia and China have vetoed two Security Council resolutions against Assads regime, but backed Annans blueprint to end the conflict in which the observatory says more than 13,500 people have died since March 2011.
In his strongest condemnation of the Syrian leader yet, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said President Bashar Assad had lost all legitimacy.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 55 people were killed in Wednesdays assault on Al Kubeir, a small Sunni farming enclave surrounded by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama.
Pro-regime militiamen swept through the farmlands, slaughtering women and children, activists said, as the opposition reacted by urging more armed rebels to bring down Assads brutal and defiant regime.
Al Kubeir incident comes after at least 108 people were killed in a May 25-26 massacre near the central town of Houla, most of them women and children who were summarily executed.
Addressing a special session of the UN General Assembly hours after the slaughter in Al Kubeir, Ban condemned the latest attack as shocking and sickening and laid the blame squarely on the Assad regime.
The trail of blood leads back to those responsible, he said. Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.
The UN said its four-vehicle convoy was hit by small arms fire in the nearby protest hub of Hama while en route to Al Kubeir. A vehicle was damaged but the observers were unhurt.
The patrol was forced to withdraw to a nearby government checkpoint, said UN spokesperson Farhan Haq. The monitors were not able to enter Al Kubeir today. They will try again tomorrow.
Regime forces are accused of bombarding the tiny settlement of Al Kubeir before pro-militia thugs went on an afternoon killing spree, hacking, stabbing and shooting residents.
A resident from a nearby village told AFP the charred bodies of women and children still lay across Al Kubeir on Thursday.
I saw something you cannot imagine. It was a horrifying massacre... people were executed and burned. Bodies of young men were taken away, said Laith, who gave only his first name for fear of retribution.
There are 49 confirmed and identified victims in Al Kubeir, the majority of them from Al Yateem family, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based observatory.
Among the dead are 18 women and children, he said, adding that six other people were also killed on Wednesday in a village near Al Kubeir.
Earlier reports from opposition groups had put the death toll at between 87 and 100.
A video posted on YouTube showed bodies of several children, including babies, wrapped in blankets and white plastic body bags. Some were charred beyond recognition.
Damascus denied responsibility and, as it has done repeatedly in the past, pointed the finger at terrorists backed by foreign forces.
A terrorist group committed a heinous crime in the Hama region which claimed nine victims. The reports by the media are contributing to spilling the blood of Syrians, state media said.
The White House condemned the outrageous targeted killings of civilians and said that, coupled with the regimes refusal to let UN observers verify the reports, it was an affront to human dignity and justice.
The US is pushing for a full transfer of power in Syria but is coming up against strong opposition from Russia and China, whose leaders fear foreign intervention could set dangerous precedents for their own countries.
Expressing horror at the latest massacre in Syria, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan told the major powers that it was time to threaten consequences if Assad does not act to halt the strife.
The international envoy, who secured Assads agreement to a six-point peace plan, grimly told the UN General Assembly: I must be frank and confirm that the plan is not being implemented.
He warned that without change in Syria, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war.
Annan was due to brief the UN Security Council later in the day and was expected to call for the creation of a contact group bringing together the Western powers and Russia and China in a bid to force Assad into talks.
The envoy is considering proposing that Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia join the permanent members of the Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the US in the group, The Washington Post and Le Monde reported.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the latest atrocity simply unconscionable, and said a solution to the crisis required a ceasefire, a transfer of power and the formation of a representative interim government.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed there would be no UN Security Council mandate for outside intervention in Syria, indicating Moscow would use its veto to block any military action.
Russia and China have vetoed two Security Council resolutions against Assads regime, but backed Annans blueprint to end the conflict in which the observatory says more than 13,500 people have died since March 2011.
i mean really ? 
