Aqrab Massacre

This alleged mass-killing occurred on December 11 in an Alawite village in or near (see below) Aqrab, about two miles north of Al-Houla, site of the Houla massacre. A reported 125-150 people were killed, primarily civilians, and primarily or totally of the Alawite religious minority shared by President Assad. Explosions were apparently involved, but there are different stories told and not yet told about just what happened, and in fact whether there was any such event at all.

Location
Aqrab (here on Google Maps) is in Hama province, even though Al-Houla, only two miles to the south, is in Homs province. As shown on the map here, the line between provinces seems to run just north of the three towns of Houla (with the massacre there happening in the southernmost Taldou). The incident is said to have occurred in Aqrab, an Alawite village, a mid-sized town with some reports giving it a majority Sunni population. For example, after Channel 4's Alex Thomson traveled to the town (as he earlier traveled to Taldou), he described "a low-rise, densely packed town of 9,000 Sunni and 2,000 Alawites." 11,000 seems reasonable population for a city that size on the map (Taldou's population was once similar)

However, some sources suggest the events may have transpired in a smaller, presumably Alawite village a few kilometers north, and so one way or another, it's worth placing on the map above. Presna Latina, for example, reported that the events occurred "near the Syrian town of Akrab," in a place called Akrab Ibrahim. Wikimapia has a location for "Akrad Ibrahim," here, about 3-4 kilometers north of Aqrab, as shown on the map. There are some other clues and related developments and rumors, and a dead sheikh, that tie this village into events in other ways that are discussed below (see Akrad Ibrahim

Initial Opposition Reports
The Syrian opposition Local Coordination Committees gave their tally of the dead for December 11, including the following:
 * By the end of Tuesday the LCC managed to document 165 martyrs, among them 3 women and a child: 61 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs “including 31 unidentified bodies in Damascus and Ein Tarma” ; 39 in Aleppo; 22 in Hama ;16 in Idlib 12 in Deir Ezzor; 9 in Homs; 5 in Daraa; and 1 in Lattakia


 * The number of martyrs is able to increase as the number of martyrs in Aqrab Massacre is still unknown yet

This "Aqrab massacre" is not explained. No 125-150 number is included in the list. Their summary of the following day didn't help, making no mention of Aqrab. There is no LCC accounting yet, and this is leading some to suspect there really was no regime massacre, that perhaps the rebels were just making up wild (and sort of self-incriminating) stories. For example, the analysts at the site Enduring America pointed to "notable omissions," specifying the government's apparent denial and that "the opposition Local Coordination Committees, a prominent source for claims on casualties, never reported a mass killing from Aqrab."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, one of them, has better coverage this time:
 * different stories have emerged as to what caused the death and injury of 125-150 civilians, almost all from an Alawite background, in the town of Aqrab as a result of a series of explosions and gunfire. The town is in the southern neighbourhood of Hama and it is near the town of Houla, which witnessed a massacre on the 25th of May


 * The first narrative claims that there were 10 pro-regime gunmen who were barricaded in residential buildings with 150 civilians (Alawites also). A delegation was sent to the buildings, made up of 2 Sheikhs and 1 retired officer from the town, in order to negotiate the moving of Alawite civilians out of the building. the delegation was not allowed to leave. Clashes then took place between the pro-regime gunmen and rebel fighters from the neighbouring Houla town, explosions then took place which led to the civilian casualties. 2 rebels were also reported to have killed, also reports that the 3 person delegation was killed, and the head of the pro-regime militia.


 * The second narrative is that a series of explosions went off by the buildings inhabited by Syrian Alawites civilians in the town.


 * The third narrative is that pro-regime militiamen held Alawite civilians captive in the buildings, and that the rebels attempted to free the civilians, causing several explosions which led to the death of the 125-150 civilians.


 * The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights urges the UN to form an independent investigation committee, which include to examine what occurred in the town of Aqrab in order to bring all those responsible for this crime to justice

This assemblage is strange, confusing and not entirely flattering to the rebel side. It was, however, widely cited in subsequent media reports, and frequently taken as reason to wonder a bit more than usual just what happened.

Two Flawed British Reports: BBC vs. Channel 4
The majority of journalists covering this and other incidents are of a school of thought that could be called "we can't report from inside Syria or confirm anything and have to rely on what activists tell us." The bulk of the reports they produce still pass on valuable information, true and otherwise, but leave things mysterious and unclear, letting activists prolifically point the finger at anyone but their own, while maintaining an initial distance from confirming the charges that seems to be shrinking with time.

For example, consider the BBC's first and fairly detailed report "'Alawite civilians killed' in Syria village." It mentioned as many as 300 Alawites killed, citing the alleged survivor called Mohammed Judl, and noted "there has been no word at all so far from the government, which is accused of killing its own supporters in order to blame the rebels." The BBC report passed on a "complex narrative"that was "impossible to verify," supplied by opposition sources from afar, patched together, and rather confusing.
 * Some opposition activists said ... pro-government militiamen besieged by rebels had blown up a building in the village where they had been holding the civilians hostage, and it had then been bombed by warplanes.
 * Activists said the [Shabiha] militia-controlled building was being besieged by the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Shabiha, who are almost entirely Alawite, were using the civilians as human shields, according to the activists. They said village elders were sent to negotiate a release of the hostages and surrender of the militiamen. But the elders were seized and killed, the militia threw grenades at hostages who were trying to run away, and then blew the building up as they themselves escaped, the activists claimed.
 * The activists' account even said that government forces later fired rockets at and bombed the building with aircraft, killing more than 200 women and children trapped there, our correspondent adds.
 * The activists' account even said that government forces later fired rockets at and bombed the building with aircraft, killing more than 200 women and children trapped there, our correspondent adds.
 * The activists' account even said that government forces later fired rockets at and bombed the building with aircraft, killing more than 200 women and children trapped there, our correspondent adds.

So the rebels besieged and surrounded the building, until they learned of a huge number of human shields held there. Talks were tried, with the local leaders (who side with the rebels here and reject the Shabiha) trying to talk sense into the villains to surrender and let the women and children go. They are killed by the Shabiha for saying that. The Shabiha then kill their captives with grenades, then blow up the building somehow, trapping nearly everyone inside/beneath rubble, and then slipped away through the rebel cordon never to be seen again. The building explosion wasn't enough to kill their now-unneeded human shields, so the government itself finished the job with both artillery and air strikes. They did this to frame the rebels, who were there the whole time but apparently never fired a shot and remained stunned on the sidelines as these events cascaded around them.

As far as we know, no one on the opposition side managed to video-record a single one of these events.

In contrast to the BBC's remote assembly of this scrambled montage, consider Channel 4's chief correspondent Alex Thomson, who actually went to Aqrab and spoke to locals that were not steered to him by opposition activists. As he reports, the massacre occurred after a sequence of events starting when "rebels reportedly visited from the al-Houla area a few days ago. According to Aqrab villagers they kidnapped the son of the local Alawite religious leader." From there it escalated:
 * The Aqrabi villagers say they mounted a counter-attack to try and free the hostage. There were armed clashes and injuries.


 * The villagers say the rebels then came back from al-Houla and took over the place. Most people fled but around 260 were corralled into one section of the village and it is there that they were hit by missiles fired by rebels.

The contrast with the vast majority of Western reports could hardly be more stark, and Thomson had the edge in that he actually went there. With what could be a touch of sarcasm, he closed:
 * Precisely how this came to be is as yet unclear and this report is only from people Channel 4 News has spoken to both in and near to Aqrab itself. Until it’s possible to get closer into the area the details of quite what happened and how will remain unclear.

However, it would appear this narrative was also not correct, and was contradicted by the following day's report now citing three named and shown alleged escapees, "the first independently observed story of Aqrab from the first outside journalist to reach this area," interviewed independently, and confirming each other on all the major details of what happened. They still blame hostile rebel fighters from Al-Houla for kidnapping hundreds of Alawites, and for anything awful that did happen. However, blowing up any number of people, with missiles or otherwise, was not part of it, as far as they knew. And further, the building they described being held in was still totally intact when Channel 4/s crew filmed it. (see "It Didn't Happen?" immediately below.)

It Didn't Happen?
From the start, there were signs that pointed to no such massacre occurring. These started less-than-compelling to Western minds; there was first no official statement from the Syrian government, and then an apparent denial from military sources in the region. The statement ran by SANA was strangely terse and unelaborated; in its entirety, it said: "A military source in the Central Region on Wednesday denied news claiming that a massacre took place in Aqrab in Hama countryside."

As widely noted, there have been no videos of 125-150 massacre victims - or any number - to confirm the stories. That in itself would make the case highly unusual for a Syrian massacre, but then this was already an unusual case. There are no previous alleged massacres of so many Alawites in one place surrounded by rebel fighters to compare this to. No bodies to show is the most straightforward - but not only - reason no bodies would be shown.

The lack of video and official denial were cited by the analysts at Enduring America, along with "notable omissions" like how the Local Coordination Committees "never reported a mass killing from Aqrab." (at least not officially - someone from the LCC reportedly did partially confirm it, as EA noted here) Between the three, the collective doubt led to a possibility worth "pursuing" in which "the town was bombed, and the largely-Alawite population has split into pro- and anti-regime groups. There has been fighting. Perhaps 6 to 10 people were killed by the shelling. There are further concerns that other residents, held hostage or cut off from escape, were slain." That's doesn't cover everything even if stretched taut. But it's an admirable effort, considering the vast gulf between the two (main) narratives and the unknown number of unknowns between them. That was acknowledged with a later post after learning of CHannel 4'sversion (see immediately below).
 * As of now, it's not possible to reconcile the two narratives. Both rely on eyewitness testimony. Nobody, it seems, has actually witnessed a "massacre," however, and there is no video of the bodies uploaded by either side. The reality is that all we know for sure is that there are two conflicting and unsubstantiated claims. We also know that there has been intense bombing of the village, at least since the FSA moved into the village on December 2-3rd.

But the strongest case by far for a fabricated event came from Alex Thomson’s second dispatch, with a video report for Channel 4 News. On Wednesday Thomson himself and his team travelled from Hama to Aqrab where they interviewed a number of witnesses who independently told an identical story. According to them, on Dec 2 around five cars full of bearded men with non-local accents came from the direction of Al-Houla. Thomson:


 * They all insist, as did everybody else we met, that the rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) corralled around 500 Alawite civilians in a large red-coloured two-storey house belonging to a prominent businessman called Abu Ismail. They then say they were held – around 500 men, women and children – in this building until the early hours of Tuesday 11 December. Nine days. 
 * [...]
 * They all agree matters came to a head when a delegation of villagers was sent on Monday at 4pm to break the deadlock. [...] It appears negotiations ran between these elders and the rebels for around four hours, ending in deadlock at around eight o’clock on Monday night. At that point, shooting broke out, the rebels firing through the windows and shouting that they had booby-trapped the building.


 * The eye-witnesses say that the shooting died down at about midnight, after which a deal was done. In screaming night-time chaos and intermittent shooting, three vehicles took around 70 of the prisoners to safety in the nearest village a mile away. However, it seems a fourth vehicle took a number of prisoners to al-Houla, where two – an unidentified woman and a boy – were treated for injuries in a rebel field hospital. The woman and boy blamed pro-government militia for taking the prisoners, according to rebel websites, and that is the version of events which has gone around the world. Until now.
 * [...]

However, we saw and filmed the building in which eye-witnesses said they were imprisoned, and it appears intact – as does the rest of the village.'' Thomson says that prisoners are still held there and negotiations with the government are still going on. Evidence of hundreds of dead was not found. Like others he wonders why video evidence of so many victims wouldn't be all over youtube if it really happened like the rebels claim.

Akrad Ibrahim
As if those weren't already enough narratives for one event, an article from Cuban news agency Prensa Latina has an additional take. Based on eyewitness testimonies, they report the events as follows:
 * The mercenaries came from the village of Houla, in the central province of Homs, they were Arab mercenaries of various nationalities who took control of the Syrian Army checkpoint a week ago, located between Akrab and Houla, they explained. In that way they reached the village of Akrab Ibrahim where were kidnapped about 300 people from the Alawite sect "religious minority, to which President Bashar al Assad belongs, including children and women who were held in a school, residents reported. The armed forces gave the military 24 hours to release the hostages and surrender their weapons, but they responded with the cold blooded murder of 233 of the hostages, including 88 children and women, stressed. There are also 19 Sunni Kurdish civilians among the victims and also representatives of Akrab town that acted as mediators in favour of those held in prison before the mercenaries.

Akrad Ibrahim (أكراد ابراهي) is a small village around five kilometers north of Aqrab up the mountains (location on wikimapia). It has one dominant building which looks very much like the typical schools every village in the region has. "Akrad" means "Kurdish" when auto-translated into English.

This place is mentioned in some other reports but mostly described as neighborhood in Aqrab, not as a separate village. Searching for the Arabic name led to announcements on facebook (Dec 9) and a Qatari forum (Dec 10) talking about gangs looting and abducting people in this village which is described as majority Sunni with a Kurdish minority (hence the name), while the villages further up the mountains are described as Alawite.

Given the many possible narratives and the problematic auto-translation from Arabic, it is hard to make sense of the events they describe, but both talk about a large family named Najjar who either was abducted or did the abducting, either by Alawites or are Alawites themselves. The announcements call on the readers to inform news media and come to help to prevent a massacre that is somehow expected. A Sheikh Ali in Aqrab is said to be able to confirm events.

Regardless of the details described here, there was definitely something building up in this village and it seems like the confusion about this topic stems from the fact that two events are merged into one - possible fighting and shelling and hostage negotiations in Aqrab down in the valley and a massacre or tragic event of sorts happening in the school building in Akrad Ibrahim a couple of kilometers away and up the hills.

The Video Record
There are plenty of videos around of alleged survivors and witnesses to the events. These are covered below. Here, we look for cases where the camera itself was a witness and lets the rest of us be.

Video of the Attacks of December 10/11
These apparently do not exist, in the public sphere anyway. If any surface, they will be quickly noted here. Video proof of the events is apparently not the strong point of the rebel argument here.

According to the emerging narrative related to Alex Thomson of Channel 4, the final sequence of events rebels give as leading up to the bombing actually began on the afternoon of the 9th, running up to midnight, perhaps culminating in the first hours of Dec. 11. Anyone looking through videos might keep that timeframe in mind and look for night shots.

Preceding Events
As Thomson heard, the taking of hostages didn't occur on the day of the alleged massacre, but rather nine days earlier. Since the reported rebel take-over of the city is of such duration, anything from December 2 forward might be of value in understanding what happened during the curious blank spot in the record that is Dec. 10/11 prior to the interviews with survivors.

A good list of some of these is compiled on the discussion page.

Alleged Witnesses
As with the nearby Houla Massacre, it comes from videos of people who claim to have survived, talking with words that are filmed by the Sunni rebels, who have them in a clinic in Houla after another government massacre again left all the victims and evidence in armed opposition hands.

Alleged Survivors
forthcoming...

Other
forthcoming...

An Alawite Awakening?
Free Halab, Dec. 12: Shabbiha Massacre Alawite Women and Children in Aqrab, Hama
 * Some if not many have feared that the revolution would unleash massacres, ethnic cleaning and even genocide upon the Alawite population of Syria. ... This horrific crime, however, was not committed by revolutionaries, extremist or otherwise. This is the story of some of those women and children who survived the massacre perpetrated against hundreds of them by the savage and psychotic Shabbiha of al-Assad, as told by the survivors themselves and by activists documenting their testimonies. All of them are Alawites.

Cited: the same videos mentioned in other reports, and a text account. This page is a good resource - the videos will be listed and studied below in time below. Some further opinion:
 * According to the testimonies, the purpose of this massacre was to frame the FSA. Juan Cole who is in Damascus, however, mentions that he has been going to all the regime’s propaganda channels and found that there was “not a single peep about it.” Perhaps it was only for the Alawites to know about, to fear for their fate if al-Assad falls, whether at the hands of the FSA or the regime. Like these poor people from Aqrab, the Alawite community of Syria has been taken hostage.

There is or will be a prevailing message around that the Alawites of Aqrab had been trying to work hand-in-hand with the FSA to break the government's grip, and that this new massacre has caused more yet to wake up and reject the government and its crimes more fully. A video of December 4 purports to show FSA and the Alawites at Aqrab village. Cluster bombs are shown, as rebel fighters speak of their time in the village. It's all in Arabic, so we can't tell if these are supposed to be Alawite FSA, FSA working with Alawites, FSA threatening to kill Alawites, or what.

Apparently in recent days some of the Alawi community got afraid of something, and hid or were taken hostage in a building with Shabiha, otherwise perhaps known as armed Alawite men. And somehow it went very badly for them despite the hiding.

NM Syria tweet: "The Alawites in Aqrab oppose the regime and its crimes. Regime forces bombed and shelled Aqrab this morning. #Syria" - First posted 2012-12-11 19:21:46 by NMSyria Response: "Today is a clear warning to Alawites, the regime will also hurt them to get what it wants. Awful things happening in Aqrab #Syria" - First posted 2012-12-11 19:31:36 by Rose Alhoms

More is expected to emerge along these lines in coming days.