Syria: Slaughter Continues - Youths Massacred in Idlib; UK, French Reporters Killed Near Homs
The number of casualties since the start of the Syrian crisis in March 2011 is now standing at more than 7,000, and the death of innocents continues. Reports are coming in (Hebrew) that Syrian security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed 27 boys earlier today, during a raid in villages in the northern Idlib county.
Syrian Opposition members are stating that most of the youths were shot in the head or the chest, at their homes or on the streets of the villages of Idita, Iblin and Balshun, close to the Syria-Turkey border. Human rights activists have recently uploaded Youtube videos showing the bodies of the boys as they lay dead on the ground.
“Army forces chased all the civilians in the villages, arrested them and killed people everywhere without hesitation,” said a representative of one of the Syrian opposition groups. “They gathered all the young men together and shot them dead, except those who were able to escape. The responsibility for this massacre is upon the army’s supreme commander - President Bashar al-Assad.”
French photojournalist Remi Ochlik and Marie Colvin, an American working on behalf of the British Sunday Times, were also killed Wednesday morning in the conflict-torn Syrian city of Homs. Witnesses and Syrian Opposition activists reported that both journalists, experienced war correspondents, were killed when the house they were staying at was hit by shells and a rocket hit them both as they were escaping.
According to human rights activists, 5,540 of the deaths since the start of the conflict were civilians. Approximately 100 people were reported killed yesterday by Syrian security forces.