I asked Akram, the Angry Arab chief correspondent in Syria yesterday to give his account. He wrote:
"In the night of 11-12 of July, something big happened in Al-Traimsseh, a tiny village of in the Province of Hama. AS always, we have two contradicting description: for the regime, it was a "Qualitative operation" that "causes heavy losses among terrorists" while the Local Coordination Committees (LLC) considered it a "massacre ".
"In the night of 11-12 of July, something big happened in Al-Traimsseh, a tiny village of in the Province of Hama. AS always, we have two contradicting description: for the regime, it was a "Qualitative operation" that "causes heavy losses among terrorists" while the Local Coordination Committees (LLC) considered it a "massacre ".
According
to the Syrian official news agency, SANA, the operation took place
after an accurate intelligence gathering in cooperation with the
residents, adding that the fighting itself didn't any casualties among
civilians, but while the Syrian forces were searching the village, they found
the dead bodies of a number of citizens who had been abducted and killed by the
terrorist groups.
The
other account of the LLC (Arabic)
said that the at six o'clock in the morning the army surrounded the village
preventing civilians from fleeing, while the village was under random
fire from machine guns and tanks. The LLC statement said that a group of the
Free Syrian Army tried to help in evacuating the wounded and attacked a
nearby military checkpoint in an attempt to open a gap so the residents could
flee, adding that after five hours of fighting, the army and
Shabiha stormed the village and that members of shabiha slaughtered and
shoot many people.
But
Al-Haqiqa has a different story (Arabic).
According to an anonymous source, the Syrian authority received intelligence
from the residents that hundreds of armed men were congregating in the
village preparing to take revenge of the residents for their position as
pro-regime. The leaders of the armed groups were holding a meeting in
the house of the village leader (Al-moukhtar) to coordinate the
operation when a fighting of several hours took place and resulted in the
killing of dozens of the armed men. The source didn't say whether there were
civilians among the victims but the author of the report believes that, based on
a video showing the victims, most of them were combatants.
My
comments:
1- The
Free Syrian Army was present in the village. This contradicts the claims of
Ryiad Al-Assa'ad, the leader of the FSA (Arabic).
2- It
wasn't a simple shelling and execution campaign of "innocent people". The three
accounts reported a fighting that took place in the village.
3- Both
Sana and LCC said there were civilians among the victims. For Al-Haqiqa, all the
victims were fighters.
4- Immediately
after the end of the fighting and before conducting any investigation what so
ever, the Syrian authorities were able to confirm that it doesn't assume any
responsibility for the civilian losses and blamed the armed groups. This
assertion looks trivial if not suspicious.
5- Al-Haqiqa
report has many flaws. For example, it doesn't explain the strange "fact" that
the armed groups didn't slaughter the civilians when they had the chance.
Instead, they entered the village then stand still under the nose of the
residents in the wait for their leaders to consider their next step risking to
be besieged by the army!!!
6-
In
the absence of an unbiased investigation, and given that the Syrian regime and
his armed opposition are both liars and murderers, it is impossible to know the
truth. In fact, this, in itself, is a tragedy that can be added to the many
other ones that Syria lives in the last fifty years"