UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Sunday afternoon to hear a briefing from the head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria on the massacre in the town of Houla, with Russia questioning whether Syrian tanks and artillery were responsible.
Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Alexander Pankin told reporters as he headed into the closed-door meeting that "there is substantial ground to believe that the majority of those who were killed were either slashed, cut by knives, or executed at point-blank distance."
Britain and France had proposed issuing a press statement condemning the attack on civilians and pointing the finger at the Syrian government for Friday's massacre. But Russia told council members it could not agree and wanted a briefing first by Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the unarmed U.N. observer mission. Russia called for the emergency meeting to hear Mood's report and consider a possible Security Council press statement.
Mood told the council that U.N. observers after revisiting the scene raised the death toll in Houla to 108 people, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters outside the council chamber. Those killed include 49 children and 34 women, Ahmad Fawzi, a spokesman for international envoy Kofi Annan, told the AP. Mood said Saturday that observers confirmed from an examination of ordnance found at the scene that artillery and tank shells were fired.
Russia, which considers Syria its closest Mideast ally, has used its Security Council veto power to block resolutions raising the possibility of U.N. action against President Bashar Assad. The assault on Houla was one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's 15-month uprising against Assad's regime.
A council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that after Mood's briefing, council members began working on the text of a press statement that would be along the lines of a statement issued Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his predecessor Annan, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria. Their statement condemned the "indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force" in violation of international law and Syrian commitments to stop using heavy weapons in populated areas. They demanded that the Syrian government stop using such weapons.
The Syrian government on Sunday denied responsibility for the Houla massacre, blaming the killings on "hundreds of heavily armed gunmen" who also attacked soldiers in the area.
Russia's Pankin said "the number of those wounded does not correspond to what you would expect in terms of destruction — You cannot have one or two houses destructed (cq) and 500 wounded with shrapnel."
"We have to establish whether it was Syrian authorities ... before we agree on something," he said.
Activists from Houla said Saturday that regime forces had peppered the area with mortar shells after large demonstrations against the regime on Friday. That evening, they said, pro-regime fighters known as shabiha stormed the villages, gunning down men in the streets and stabbing women and children in their homes
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters that from the information his government has gathered "it seems quite clear that the massacre in Houla was caused by a heavy bombardment and by government artillery and indeed tanks."
"And I would expect the briefing we'll receive from Gen. Mood today will confirm that. And if that's the case, we condemn it utterly," he said.
Both Pankin and Grant said the attack represents a violation of international law regardless of who is responsible.
The Houla attacks have sparked outrage from American and other international leaders, and renewed concerns about the relevance of a 6-week-old international peace plan negotiated by Annan that has not stopped almost daily violence despite the presence of more than 250 U.N. observers. The U.N. put the death toll weeks ago at more than 9,000. Hundreds have been killed since.
