Homs Massacres

The Homs Massacres are all events of deliberate mass killings, of civilians and families especially, in and around the Syrian city of Homs, from the start of protests and violence in March, 2011 until the present. By and large these have been effectively blamed on the Syrian military and allied forces - especially "Shabiha." But this is based almost entirely on activist reports and the stories of alleged witnesses and survivors. and the actual circumstances of each incident and allegation remain murky, and merit "a closer look."

This page is for the moment a partial/stub page. The information has been coming together first on the talk page, and is now being copied, with clean-up, into the space below. It's coming together in chronological order.

Locations
The following map gives the range of districts in Homs. The borders and labels are all per Wikimapia, some with translation or shift to a spelling used here (although different reports use various spellings, they can usually be placed on this map). Some borders are left out for readability. Light blue = district as outlined on Wikimapia (note discontinuous al-Wa'er to the west) and green = outlying village, or green belt, depending. Red clearly is the primary rebel hotbed, Baba Amr, (although at times most other districts have been under rebel sway, sometimes for months). Purple = the big districts, somewhere in which, the bigger massacres of February 3/4 (Khalidiya) and March 11/12 (Karm al-Zaytoun, and surrounding districts) reportedly happened. Al-Sitteen street in the north is a place cited where bodies were often dumped after murky assassinations.

Broader area map: The are shaded yellow and towns in it are what could be called the Homs orbit, read narrowly to not include the Qusayr, Rastan, or al-Houla orbits. This can be used for reference in several cases below. The other colored areas have their own pages here: (Green - Houla) orange - Qusayr and red - Rastan (no page yet). )

Full Timeline
This timeline is full in scope, but incomplete. Each entry will have a short summary, and most incidents listed are/will be further explored in their own section below (under ), or on a dedicated ACLOS (A Closer Look On Syria) page, as linked. Those with pages and no sections here deserve, and may get, a decent summary here.

Note: A special effort is being made to fill in 2011, so the relative lack of massacres means something. More incidents will emerge with deeper research, but by and large the real world-shocking massacre is a 2012 event,
 * 2011
 * April 17: page: Tellawi Family Massacre An Alawite brigadier-General, along with his 17-year-old son and his two nephews (15 and 17) were dragged from their car and brutally murdered and mutilated. Both sides blamed each other.


 * April 19 (early AM): "Massacre of Time" aka Clock Square Massacre (section) City Center, App. 12 dead at most, "dozens," or over 200; accounts vary


 * May 8: Wikipedia: "On 8 May, unidentified gunmen attacked a bus, carrying workers who were returning from work in Lebanon to Homs, killing 10 people and wounding three."


 * August 10 or so: ""Troops and armoured vehicle stormed Bab Amro early evening. The neighbourhood is witnessing a massacre. The number of dead are likely to go up because there are seven out of 25 wounded in critical condition," Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman told Reuters."


 * December 4-6, 2011: page: Early December, 2011 Sectarian Killings in Homs "Sixty-one people have been killed in the Syrian central city of Homs, according to Al Jazeera's Rula Amin ... Among those killed were 34 Sunnis and 27 Alawites, she said. It was not immediately clear who was behind the violence." ) The linked ACLOS page explores this allegation and various reports of the days December 3-7.


 * Late December "Baba Amr Massacre" - In the days before and during a long-sought visit by the Arab League's observers to the rebel hotbed starting December 27, regime forces in and around the district went on a spree of Shabiha in-home executions and strange shelling. (section forthcoming)


 * 2012
 * January 24: A "massacre" by shelling, allegedly, leaving horribly mangled victims. Bab Tadmur district. (section/summary forthcoming)


 * January 26: section: Bahader-Akkra Family Massacre: At least 13-17 civilians executed in Karm al-Zaytoun, including six children (8 months old to nine years, mostly around 2), and at least five women, all civilians and absolutely mauled in their homes, throats sliced and skulls split, left where opposition activists would find them and be able to prove the "Shabiha" slaughter, as they branded it.

Massacre Details
Those massacres, alleged, real, and unclear, with no dedicated page, will be explored in sub-sections below, listed in chronological order.

Clock Square Massacre
April 19, 2011, City Center: Some sources mention a "massacre of time," where "time" = الساعة = alsa'eh (phoenetic) = central square with the central clock where you check the time and get in sync. "Freedom square" as currently labeled, with "new time" at its center. This is the new clock tower; there is also the old clock tower, a French design from the 1930s with three faces on an iron frame.

A year after the alleged massacre there, Rose al-Homsi posted an account from witness to the April 18 protest and the night-time violence. The following is summarized from that. At the clock square, protesters gathered and gave speeches until sunset then settled in for sleeping and chanting god is great, and for the downfall of the regime. At 10 pm a group went to the Baath party headquarters in Inshahat to check rumors of high-up officials there. Extra fancy cars, and "protective" ones, were seen parked there. But back at the protest site a kilometer or so north they decided they wouldn't run. "We would not let go so easily!"


 * The shabeeha [thugs] and regime forces spread around the Clock Square through its side roads however did not attack or enter. They were in vast numbers – quite unexpected to be honest, we began to count and prepare for the attack. The Sheikh Mohamad Aldalati spoke to a high ranking security officer, the officer agreed for his forces to remain separate from the protesters behind their checkpoints as a protective barrier between them and the shabeeha [regime thugs]. The agreement was in fact put into practice, but their looks were of death and swearing from their side and our side. The young man returned to the square with his friends, they were fully aware now the attack was not just being planned by local regime forces but was in fact ordered by Maher Al-Assad himself – his order was to empty the square, or else.

They prepared, gathering medical supplies, arranging field clinics in case you can't trust the hospitals, arranging hiding spots if they needed to escape. There's not a single mention of weapons being involved. The Sheikhs agreed to stay with the people, while the women agreed to leave, fearing possible rape. At 1:00 AM, "the number (of protesters) decreased by a large amount and we began preparing to sleep as well as cleaning the square, some ate and others sang. The young men decided to leave the square, many had sisters who were out all day and their whereabouts were unknown, and others had parents fearing the worst for their son’s safeties. They left the square leaving behind the young men who were at around 5000 in total."

At 1:50 am, the shooting began. "The gunfire could be heard from every corner of Homs, there was gunfire in Baba Amr, Alkhaldiyeh, Bab Sba’, Bab Dreib [in almost all of old Homs], Albayada and Deir Balbeh….And most certainly in Clock Square! The young men went onto the roof and could see the bombs falling onto the square and bullets raining onto the protesters. The sounds of Takbeer “God is Great” filled the skies..." But it wasn't all those protesters who had fanned out to check on their sisters. "The friend told him that the shabeeha (thugs) forces opened fire heavily and randomly, targeting them. Protesters then ran and dispersed in all directions, chanting “God is the Greatest”. Gunfire was following them around in main streets and other roads." It followed the friend all the way home as he ran for two hours, north to Khalidiya. "The friend also told him that a lot of young men were martyred that day." Another witness cited for this report, it says, "did not move at all so the regime’s forces would actually believe that he was already dead. He told his friend everything he has witnessed." He saw bodies loaded into garbage trucks, and he was one of them. There were many; "he said that the number of dead bodies that were with him were over two hundred." He saw how they were offloaded at different places - the military hospital, the national hospital, and in a mass grave in a nearby village. There, he learned somehow, residents dug up the bodies briefly, and "the regime’s forces then instantly came, took the corpses, and buried them in an unknown location (to cover up their crime)." But this witness "was taken as a dead body to the military hospital with the rest of the bodies." He was "the only one who stayed alive to tell this miserable story," but also "discovered that one person was still alive and so treated him" (in the garbage truck or after all the offloadings?). After treating the other survivor, "he was detained." Then "once he was freed he came out to tell of the tragedy." "He didn’t know until now how, why, or for what reason he had been kept alive," and that is a weak point in this "miserable" tale - that the authorities would move a whole mass grave of mute dead people to hide the truth, but let a living witness just walk away to tell all the details makes very little sense.

The year-later report concludes that still "the exact number of martyrs" remained unclear. If not over 200, as the dead-playing witness claims, "the majority confirmed that there had been dozens, while some others said that there had been less than that," but they also ran away, so may have just not seen the piles of bodies. The CDV databse suggests it was less than dozens, or one dozen at most. A query shows a total of 12 documented martyrs in Homs April 18 and 19 combined, sharing 8 family names between them. One other factor to consider is that "the number of missing people is very high," Rose al-Homsi adds, but roughly how high is not stated.

After the killings, it was learned, "shabeeha danced and chanted praises to their God Bashar. They desecrated the Square with their feet ...  The celebrations lasted until daybreak with gunshots..." Later, in mid-March, 2012, two men described as something like Shabiha ("Hbhristin" to "Hbih" variant of Shabiha) were captured in Homs and put on rebel video as having admitted involvement in this massacre. A news story explained a video, adding that these two "participated in the massacre of time in Homs ... Omar Mukhtar Brigade arrest Hbhristin participated in the massacre of time in Homs committed by gangs and Anisa Brigades on 18-4-2011" when "Elmejrman recognize that the gang transported by dump trucks and bodies after the fire car wash blood." (Google translated)

Bahader-Akkra Family Massacre
January 26, 2012 (forthcoming)