Opposition activists and the Syrian government have both accused the other of responsibility for the deaths of scores of civilians on Wednesday in a new massacre, in the country’s northern Hama provice, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees put the number of those killed in the village of al-Qubayr at 86.
The al-Assad regime in Damascus denied any involvement in the killings and said “terrorists” were behind the killings.
“What a few media have reported on what happened in al-Qubayr, in the Hama region, is completely false,” the government said in a statement on official television, Al Arabiya reported.
“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,” the statement said.
The latest deaths come just days after a similar incident in the Houla district in which over a hundred died. Most of the victims in that attack were killed in execution-style shootings, according to the U.N.
Syrian forces had been attacking al-Qubayr and the nearby village of Maazarif with artillery, Al Arabiya said.
The United States, at a Friends of Syria group meeting in Istanbul on Wednesday, called on members of the international community to introduce separate sanctions against the al-Assad regime to step up pressure on the country’s leadership.
“We have taken important steps, but much work remains,” U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton said in a statement posted on the State Department website on Wednesday.
“We must continue to close off the regime’s economic lifelines, expand the circle of countries vigorously implementing sanctions, and prevent the Syrian government from evading them,” she added.
