Talk:Mazraat al-Qubeir massacre

Victims list
As Shaam News Network reported on Facebook, June 7, 2:07 AM:
 * Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) & Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies (DCHRS) report on the massacre of Mazra’at al-Qubeir in Hama 07-06-2012. They passed on the following "confirmed and documented names of the victims who fell to the massacre of Mazra’at al-Qubeir":

- Muhammad Hasan Ulwan, 32 years.

- Salah Jamil Ulwan

- Muhammad Hassan Ulwan

- Mahdi Ahmad Ulwan

- Sari Ali al-Hamdou

- Imad Ismael Ulwan

- Muhammad Salah Ulwan

- Salah Jamil Ulwan

- Name is not confirmed yet

- Name is not confirmed yet

- Ibrahim al-Yatim, 4 year-old child

- Ibrahim al-Yatim, 9 year-old child

- Ahmad Ali al-Yatim, 5 year-old child

- Ayman Ahmad al-Yatim

- Jassem al-Yatim

- Khalid Husein al-Yatim

- Ali Husein al-Yatim

- Faris Husein al-Yatim

- Muhammad Husein al-Yatim

- Husein al-Yatim

- Hamza Ahmad al-Yatim, 1 year old infant.

- Ayman Hamoud al-Yatim

- Muhammad Hammoud al-Yatim

- Hamoud Kastal al-Yatim, 68 years old,

- Hamida al-Abdullah

- Rasheed al-Yatim

- Ryadh al-Yatim

- Izzou Ahmad al-Yatim

- Ali Ahmad al-Yatim, 9 years old kid,

- Kheirou Ahmad al-Yatim

- Rasheed Kheirou al-Yatim

- Ali Kheirou al-Yatim

- Muhammad Kheirou al-Yatim

- Umar Ahmad al-Yatim, 3 years old kid,

- Awad Ahmad al-Yatim

- Aukeh Ahmad al-Yatim

- Fteim Ahmad al-Yatim

- Faisal al-Yatim

- Muhammad Ahmad al-Yatim, 9 years old.

- Muhammad Ahmad al-Yatim

- Muhammad al-Yatim

- Muhammad Rasheed al-Yatim

- Muhammad Shihadeh al-Yatim

- Muhammad Ulwan

- Maryam Ahmad al-Yatim

- Mansour al-Yatim

- Manfya Stief

- Muna al-Yatim, infant girl

- Noufal al-Yatim

- Rose al-Yatim

- Salloum Hassan al-Yatim

- Samra al-Yatim

- Sabrya al-Yatim

- Abdullah al-Yatim

- Khalid al-Yatim

- Noufa al-Yatim

- Husein al-Faris

- Khalid al-Faris

- Faisal al-Faris

- Mansour al-Faris

--Caustic Logic (talk) 01:13, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Massacre Victims: How Many and Who Else?
I only realized the difference in the official/SANA version of the death toll when making this page. On reflection, I think it's worth revising. Nine massacre victims only compared to 78. I imagine their number might not be comprehensive, and they don't specify how many fighters or soldiers were killed in the ensuing clashes. Considering the similarity to Tremseh, where even the mainstream media came to acknowledge the government version was "closer to the truth" than what the rebels were saying, it's probably so in this case. Any others have thoughts before I revise (soon-ish)? This list of names - is it mostly made-up, mostly Rebel fighters, or what? I move for the latter: the names seem to predominantly male, over 75% (some I'm not sure), and only a few of those are children. The "name is not confirmed yet" entries could be the foreign fighters. --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:13, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Unsorted
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/world/middleeast/syrians-bar-un-monitors-from-a-massacre-inquiry.html?pagewanted=all No corpses were found, and the team’s officials said many of the facts behind the killings, which occurred Wednesday, had yet to be determined. But it seemed clear that the perpetrators had hastily sought to conceal what had happened, reinforcing suspicions that the government, by thwarting the monitors’ efforts to reach the site on Thursday, had bought time for a cover-up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9317692/Syria-full-horror-of-al-Qubeir-masacre-emerges.html The voice of Laith al-Hemary's brother whispered on the mobile phone: "There are shouts and screams coming from outside," he said. "They are killing everyone they find." Then the line went dead.

At 5.10pm, three hours after the attack began, Mr Hemary's brother's voice died away and he stopped answering his calls. Pushing open the door of his home several hours later, Mr Hemary found the bodies of his mother, three sisters and three brothers lying bloodied on the ground.

"They had been beaten on the head by sticks and stabbed with knives," he said. "I went to other homes. I saw family after family slaughtered by knives."

After the militia departed and al-Qubeir fell quiet later that evening, people from nearby villages ventured into the stricken hamlet. "I saw a two-month-old child without a head," said Abou Hisham al-Hamouli, who lives in a village just over a mile from al-Qubeir. "I saw the burnt corpse of a woman. Her two children were wrapped around, hugging her. They died like that. There were two many burnt bodies."

Other eyewitnesses reported how the militiamen sang songs in praise of Mr Assad.

A former soldier who joined the rebel Free Syrian Army said that he reached the village within hours of the massacre, but left quickly because Syrian government troops were still in the area. "I went into houses and saw children without a head, and others without arms. Some were burned and some were without eyes," he said.

There were only five known survivors, he added. The exact number of victims could not be confirmed, but people from the nearby village of Maarizab said they had buried 57 corpses. A further thirty bodies were missing and had not yet been buried, said activists.

With almost no foreign reporters in Syria, the accounts of what happened in this remote farming village cannot be independently verified.

SANA report, June 7 [sana.sy/eng/21/2012/06/07/424129.htm Original link] Google Cache Mazraat al-Qubeir People Tell of Horror and Armed Terrorist Groups' Crimes against them Jun 07, 2012
 * HAMA, (SANA) – Several people from Mazraat al-Qubeir and Marzaf villages in Hama countryside narrated the horror and crimes which were committed by the armed terrorist groups against them, revealing the reality of the horrific crime which took place in their village last night as 9 citizens were killed with cold blood.
 * In phone calls with the Syrian TV, Abu Hawash, a citizen from Mazraat al-Qubeir village, said that armed terrorists who had RPG launchers and PKC machineguns stormed the area and attacked children and women, calling on the Syrian army and law-enforcement forces to protect them from the terrorists. 
 * Another citizen denounced the bloody satellite channels which are counterfeiting the truth to serve their interests.
 * For his part, Abu Mohammad said an armed terrorist group infiltrated to Mazraat al-Qubeir and killed 9 citizens, adding that after the crime took place, the residents called the authorities to protect them.
 * F.Allafi/Ghossoun

UN: UN observers in Syria obstructed in attempts to reach site of reported massacre
 * ''7 June 2012 – United Nations observers in Syria have been obstructed in their attempts to reach the village of Mazraat al-Qubeir today, to verify reports of large-scale killings there.

“Their mission is being obstructed by three factors: First, they are being stopped at Syrian Army checkpoints and in some cases turned back; second, some of our patrols are being stopped by civilians in the area; thirdly, we are receiving information from residents of the area that the safety of our observers is at risk if we enter the village,” the head of the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), Major-General Robert Mood, said in a statement.''


 * “Despite these challenges, the observers are still working to get into the village to try to establish the facts on the ground,” he added.

Syria's permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar Al-Jafari, clarified the government's position at the United Nations on June 7. This can be seen on video and summarized in an article from Al Manara
 * Concerning the latest massacre in Al-Qubeir, Al-Jaafari said that killing innocent civilians in al-Qubeir took place 5 hours before any clashes happened, adding that the images broadcast by al-Jazeera and al-Arabia are not those of the massacre victims.
 * The Syrian TVs will air the true images of the massacre…The instigative media channels have taken to airing such fabrications before the UN Security Council meetings, added al-Jaafari.
 * He said that the locals affirmed that the gunmen who committed the crime came from another village called Jreijes which led the locals to call for the help of the law-enforcement members.

Huffington Post
 * Activists say at least 78 people were killed, most of them from one extended Sunni Muslim family living in a score of farm houses on the flat fertile land northwest of the city of Hama. 

[...]
 * ''Some activists said anti-Assad insurgents had been operating in areas near the village, home to about 150 people, who may have been targeted in revenge or as collective punishment. But most said Mazraat al-Qubeir had never joined the revolt against four decades of Assad family rule. The hamlet lies about 20 miles (13 km) northwest of Hama, where forces loyal to Assad's father crushed armed Islamist uprising 30 years ago, killing many thousands of people and razing whole districts.

"They were peaceful Syrians, neither with the regime nor against it," said one activist, who called himself Abu Ghazi. He named 54 people killed, all but a dozen of them from the al-Yateem family. Three were listed as three years old or younger. ''

Mr. Hemari/Hamwy is a Yateem? Huffington Post
 * ''a Syrian farmer said ... "There was smoke rising from the buildings and a horrible smell of human flesh burning," said a man who told how he had watched Syrian troops and "shabbiha" gunmen attack his village as he hid in his family olive grove. "It was like a ghost town," he told Reuters by telephone, asking not to be named because he feared for his safety. ... "After the army fired on one area, security forces and shabbiha would go inside the houses. I heard gunshots inside three houses, then I saw them come out and burn them," the witness said. "Most of the time I couldn't hear anything over the artillery fire ... By 8 p.m., they were finished."

[...]
 * ''The witness, who claimed he was a Yateem family member, said he had spoken to his brother on a cellphone as gunmen rampaged through the town.

"The last conversation we had, I told him I saw the forces coming to our house," he said. "After the shabbiha and tanks left, the first thing I did was run to my house. It was burned. All seven people from my house were killed. I saw bodies on the stairs, the bathroom and bedroom. They were all burned." '' Also, how many people specified? Very few. This one sounds like the same batch of seven - a mother (older) and six "children" (a daughter and five grandchildren):
 * Video footage released on Thursday showed the bodies of at least a dozen women and children, wrapped in colourful blankets and white burial shrouds, packed with frozen water bottles for want of a morgue or any other refrigeration. Activists said they included a grandmother, her daughter and five grand-children killed in Mazraat al-Qubeir. Charred remains, possibly human body parts, were also visible. 

Location
(incorporated) The location does little to mute the parallels with Al-Houla massacre. Reported as 20km west of Hama, it would be roughly the same distance north of Houla. shown by the BBC on satellite, it would seem to be ... the place it'll take a little more work to locate.
 * Not much more time. Mazraf. I could have typed it in. It's not clear if this is really the same as Mazra'at, or Mazra'at Al-Qubeir. But "the nearby village of Maarizab" where the dead were buried (i.e. likely perp village) could be the very near and larger Muhradah, another possible but less than clear fit. Would mirror Kafr Laha-Taldou quite well. It could be one of those towns I can't read around there, or another town around another spot.

Using the UN monitors' video should help pinpoint the exact location around there the BBC didn't find (later).
 * If it's even the spot... --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC) and --Caustic Logic (talk) 01:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Al-Qubeir
 * Al-Qubeir (Arabic: القبير; also referred to as Mazraat al-Qubeir, Qubair, Qubayr, al-Qubayr and al-Kubeir in various news reports) is a settlement in the Hama Governorate of Syria, near the larger village of Maarzaf.[1] Al-Qubeir is described as a Sunni farming enclave surrounded by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama.[2] Al-Qubeir is around 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the city of Hama with around 30 homes and had around 160 inhabitants.[3] BBC News reports have described al-Qubeir as "just a few single-storey flat-roofed buildings set in the middle of golden corn fields"[4] and as having "fewer than 30 houses".[5]

The peak seen in the the background in the UN video at 0:15 could be this 700 m high hill 27 km to the south east: http://goo.gl/maps/z3dV6 -- Petri Krohn (talk) 22:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia gives an exact location, but I think they are wrong. The topography is different: on Google earth you cannot see the peak (or any peak) from the stated spot. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 19:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah, I had missed the co-ordinates. Looking at the town so tagged, something says it could be the one. Zooming out on the locale, it's right in the area, one mile from the southern tip of Mazraf, closer yet to my red dot. That puts your peak quite a ways to the east, but I was thinking the closer hills, almost due south, if it's possible they'd look that big. If we're looking SE, it's not much further, just south of Hama. Looking again at the video,0:17, it's near mid-day, sun about south, and the peaks seem to be off to the southeast then. The one to the left/north might be this hacked up mountain area. I think the hills are too small, your peak(s) correct, and Wikipedia's location could be it, though all unobstructed views from that area should be about the same. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:22, 8 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You should be able to recreate the view on Google Earth with the ground level view. UN says "the observers were able to access the village at 3:30 local time." Cannot be noon. Besides, your "hacked up mountain" is a a hole in a rock quarry. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:44, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. – Should have been more explicit earlier. I identified the peak by recreating a similar scene on Google Earth. The peak is visible throughout the area – except it is NOT visible in the spot identified by Wikipedia. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:48, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I still don'thave GE. I meant mid-day, not noon. 3:30 is later than I thought, but all I can say is the sun is fairly high. There's the time zone issue too -they'd likely use official time, GMT +3 (?) while in the +2 zone - could add an hour, depending. Quarry, oops, read the shadows wrong. For two mountains then all I can see is the two peaks south of Hama, about on the same line from that area. To appear that spread, the left one must be the peakier (eastern) half of the southern mountain, the distance can't be too great, and it suggests more easterly location than the red dot or Wikipedia's spot. It'd be in the hill areas, obviously, and there seem to be very few towns in there. I can see about three possible hits, like this (sorry, I don't know the goo.gl trick or get the need). --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Zabadani
From the page:
 * 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.” 

I just ran across this town, or one with the same name. Suburb of Damascus, rebel held apparently since July-ish. Apparently also called Zabdeen, Just about 2 miles north of Deir al-Asafir where the alleged cluster bombing of the "playground" occurred. FWIW. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:43, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Confusion over Zabadani. The Telegraph says it's "east of Damascus," like this Zabdeen (which HRW's coordinates point to, by the way). But the name is a bit too different, and Google Maps has Zabadani further off to the West of the capitol, here, almost on the Lebanese border. That's surely what the monitor refers to. What the Telegraph meant is less clear.