Mazraat al-Qubeir massacre

This massacre occurred on June 6, 2012, in the village of Mazraat Al-Qubeir, near Hama. The most common reported death toll is 78. Of course, the government blamed the rebels and vice-versa, as usual.

Echoes of Houla
Like the Houla massacre two weeks earlier and a few miles south, the Qubeir incident appears to have involved some pretty serious firepower blowing up homes, mass killings of whole families, widespread arson, and a confused narrative coming from the opposition. This massacre Followed the pattern from Houla to an eerie degree. As Reuters reported: ''Several activists told Reuters that up to 40 women and children were among the dead when the village in central Syria was shelled on Wednesday before fighters moved in and shot and stabbed dozens of people to death."

Time passed on the SNC account that "the militiamen converged on Qubair from neighboring pro-regime villages. It said some of the dead were killed execution-style, others were slain with knives. "Women and children were burned inside their homes in al-Qubair," said Mousab Alhamadee, an activist based in the central province of Hama."

The timing too was to similar effect, and even more acutely suggesting someone intent on harming the Syrian government's standing in the world. Reuters reported:
 * U.N. monitors tried on Thursday to reach a village where activists say Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad massacred at least 78 villagers, hours before a divided U.N. Security Council discusses Syria.


 * If confirmed, the killings at Mazraat al-Qubeir, near Hama, will pile pressure on world powers to act, but they have been paralysed by divisions pitting Western and most Arab states against Assad's defenders in Russia, China and Iran.

Investigators Shot At
UN observers with UNSMIS who tried to visit the site on June 7 came under fire from what they described as "small arms", fired by unseen gunmen, leaving it unclear who was trying to keep them away. No one was injured in the shooting. They were later able to visit, the following day, taking notes and releasing some valuable video footage.

UK Channel 4's chief correspondent Alex Thomson made it in close enough to try and report from the scene, but he too was shot at. As he wrote on his Channel 4 blog, "I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus." Interestingly, Thomson notes his unusual reporter status and the reaction of some:
 * really irritating guy who claims to be from “rebel intelligence” and won’t quite accept that we have a visa from the government. In his book foreign journos are people smuggled in from Lebanon illegally and that’s that. We don’t fit his profile. He and his mates are making things difficult for our driver and translator too – their Damascus IDs and our Damascus van reg are not helping. This is new. Different. Hostile. 

This hostility had them decide to turn back. A black car with four men offered to lead them back out of town, but led them to a different place in "no-man's land." Gunfire opened on the car. Their escort "roared off as soon as we re-appeared" from a dead-end alley. Apparently no one was injured as the driver sped them back to safety on his own.

Thomson reported a member of the Arab League observers affirming to him "I read your piece “set up to be shot in no mans land”, I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.”

Rebel Narrative
Reuters:
 * A Hama-based activist using the name Abu Ghazi, citing survivors in Mazraat al-Qubeir, said nine Syrian army T-72 tanks had surrounded the hamlet of 20 houses northwest of Hama at 2 p.m. (1100 GMT) and started bombarding it. An hour later the tanks drove in, accompanied by plain-clothes fighters carrying guns, knives and heavy sticks, he said, who started killing men, women and children. He listed more than 50 names of victims, many from a single family called al-Yateem, but said some bodies could not be identified because they were so badly burned. The bodies of between 25 and 30 men were taken away by the killers, he said.

The Victims
From a list on Shaam News' Facebook page, the dead were overwhelmingly from one family, Al-Yatim. The specific targetting of large families is another Houla massacre hallmark. Here, 44 of the listed 78 names are Al-Yatim, with a few each from Ulwan and Faris families. The Syrian National Congress reported that "35 of them were from the same Al-Yatim family and more than half of them women and children." One name that doesn't appear, seven times or even once, is Al-Hamwy. Nonetheless, CBC heard from a survivor of that family who says he lost seven members of his household.
 * Leith Al-Hamwy told The Associated Press by telephone that he survived by hiding in an olive grove about 800 metres from the farms as the killings were taking place. But he said his mother and six siblings, the youngest 10-year-old twins, did not.