Chilling mobile phone footage purports to show men being gunned down in Homs, shedding new light on the bloody crackdown
Fresh evidence has emerged of the scale of Syria's crackdown on demonstrators, with a video smuggled into Lebanon that shows a number of unarmed protesters being shot, some seriously injured and possibly dead, in what appears to be the city of Homs earlier this month.
The video, captured on a mobile phone, shows up to half a dozen men being shot by what appears to be relentless gunfire. It was smuggled into the Lebanese border town of Wadi Khaled on Sunday. The footage is believed to have been taken during a rally after Friday prayers on 3 June.
According to a Syrian man who spoke to the Guardian in Wadi Khaled on Tuesday, the man who took the footage was tracked down by regime officials, then tortured and killed. The Syrian man, who identified himself as "Mohammed" showed a photo of a corpse of a man whom he identified as his slain friend. He said it had been given to him by a relative from Homs, who had managed to avoid Syrian border forces outside Wadi Khaled.
The video is graphic, gruesome and difficult to watch but, like many others that are being uploaded to the internet, is being used to cast light on an increasingly bloody uprising that is otherwise being conducted without international scrutiny. Syria has banned international journalists for the past three months and continues to disrupt the internet and telephone lines as its forces sweep through restive towns and cities.
Other videos have shown the same violent methods of quelling dissent, but few of those posted online have been as violent. It has not been confirmed how many people were killed or injured in Homs on 3 June, but reports from activists at the time suggested at least 20 had died.
"We are members of the anti-government movement," said Mohammed, who comes from the town of Tel Khalakh, which has also been heavily targeted by Syrian security forces. This regime who made our lives hell and made us flee to Wadi Khaled."
Mohammed was not present at the protest in Homs on the day the video shot, but spoke to the Guardian about a similar crackdown in his town, in nearby Tel Khalakh on 3 June.
"We were protesting on Friday. We did not have any weapons at all. We were children, women and elderly men. We were being shot at from all directions by the security forces and gangsters," he said.
"They began to detain us. They shot our children and women. They did not leave any one alone.
"We were shouting, 'peaceful, peaceful.' We began taking bullets from snipers on the roofs of the government buildings. When the snipers had finished their job, the gangsters came down. They began to detain us and step on our bodies.
"They were mocking us, 'You want freedom?' and stepping on our backs. They took our children. They broke into houses and began to break things inside.
"They sealed off the whole district, so no one could leave or enter. We were stuck there for three days, running place to place to avoid arrest.
"We were stuck there for three days, running place to place to avoid arrest. We want to go back to our families. We want the regime to go away. We do not want … Bashar al-Assad, because he is a butcher. We have been living for 43 years with this butcher."
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/15/syrian-gunmen-shoot-peaceful-protesters
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