Harak Massacre

This reported massacre, or string of mass-killing set amongst over a week of battle (August 18-26, 2012), allegedly occurred in Al-Harak, near Daraa. A death toll of over 500 was reported, including rebel fighters but, according to them, only a few, with at least 400 civilians killed. These included women and children, many executed with guns or knives and burned. Although some were also killed in shelling and cross-fire. Well, some 100 of the victims were former fighters who had laid down their guns and were allegedly massacred. But the rest, mostly not dead rebels, the rebels say.

The period of the killings coincided with the successful government re-conquest of a Al-Harak, which rebels had taken over in May in order to launch attacks on the nearby military base (many of the bodies from the massacres are buried in a mass grave inside the base, rebels say). The huge reported death toll amidst a rebel military defeat is a trait shared with the "massacre" at Daraya, a major Damascus suburb, in those same days. This too had a reported death toll of at least 4-600, featured some women and children but mostly fighting-age men, again coinciding with another rebel defeat. In Daraya, it seems, the rebels were able to inflate the death toll with their own mini-massacres of locals taken hostage during their weeks in control of the city. The same possibility cannot be discounted as playing into the horrible death toll in al-Harak.

Both of these very similar alleged massacres, Daraya and Harak, were singled out in UN Human Rights Council's February, 2013 report, on their short list of five mass killings by pro-government forces investigated. (this is since their last report of June, 2012, and some four others were still under investigation). The UNHRC's sources included rebel fighters, but not a single government soldier. From this sampling, they found "reasonable grounds to believe that Government forces and Shabbiha, committed the war crime of murder, killing persons hors de combat and civilians" in Al-Harak, and no such evidence for rebel fighters being complicit in any of it.

This page, currently a stub, will proceed on the assumption that the UNHRC's findings are worth close and critical examination. See the discussion page until there's enough to fill the page in.