About 1,000 Syrian refugees have fled into neighbouring Turkey in a single day as evidence of fresh massacres by the army emerged in the north of the country.
Turkey’s Interior Minister said it was considering establishing a buffer zone along its border after the exodus, although he gave no details about how such an area would operate and where it would be located.
Besir Atalay’s remarks reflect the humanitarian emergency on the border, across which at least 14,700 Syrians have fled since last summer. The latest influx occurred on the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising, during which the opposition says 9,113 people have been killed.
Almost a quarter of a million Syrians have fled their homes because of the violence, according to United Nations figures. The head of the Turkish Red Crescent warned that the figure could soar to half a million if President Assad continues his bloody campaign to cling to power.
The Syrian opposition released gruesome video footage today of 13 charred corpses of men and boys it said had been burnt to death by President Assad’s forces in revenge for giving shelter to four army defectors. Images also emerged appearing to show Syrian Army soldiers looting abandoned houses in Homs.
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Among the refugees was a defecting army general, the seventh senior officer to seek shelter in Turkey. The refugees were fleeing the latest Syrian Army offensive to retake Idlib, a northern town of 150,000 people that for months has been under the control of the Free Syrian Army. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since the Army took control, the bodies of 23 victims of extreme torture had been found near Idlib, just days after Amnesty International issued a report detailing the regime’s numerous torture methods.
“Twenty-three bodies with marks of extreme torture were found near Mazraat Wadi Khaled, west of the city of Idlib,” reports said, adding that the victims were blindfolded, handcuffed and shot dead. Another five people were killed in raids across the northern province by security forces.
Video footage released by another opposition group showed the charred and twisted bodies of 13 men and boys, aged between 15 and 60, who had allegedly been burnt to death for giving shelter to defectors in the village of Ain Laroz.
One refugee from Idlib told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that he had gone into a building in the northwest of the city at the beginning of the assault to find three dead children, victims of a random mortar attack by the Army: “Half of the building was destroyed. Three children — two girls and one boy — and their father had been killed. One of the girls had fallen from the building so she was lying in the street. The other members of the family were injured. There was no particular reason for the Army to attack this building. They just shot at everything. They are crazy.”
Another witness told HRW that hospitals quickly filled with the dead and wounded. “I would say that about half of the casualties were clearly civilians. There were women, children and elderly among them. Most of the civilians were wounded or killed because of shelling,” the man said.
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The reports of massacres echoed those that emerged from the central city of Homs after its rebel district of Baba Amr was stormed two weeks ago, after a month-long artillery bombardment in which hundreds of people were killed.
Syrian state TV broadcast footage of pro-Assad rallies in Damascus, where thousands of regime supporters waved flags and carried portraits of the President. Numerous Russian flags were also waved in gratitude for Moscow’s veto of a UN Security Council resolution condemning the regime, which came just before the Army began its attack on Homs.