THE SYRIAN authorities and opposition activists yesterday levelled accusations at each other over a massive explosion that destroyed several houses in a poor district of the central Syrian city of Hama.
Syrian state media said 16 people died when rebel bombmakers set off explosives in one of the houses, while activists reported that many had been killed in intensive shelling or even by a Scud missile but could not agree on the toll.
Activists who said 57 to 70 people had died posted images on the internet showing bodies being pulled from the wreckage. They said 13 children and 15 women were among the dead.
State television broadcast photographs of wounded children in hospital and accused rebels of mounting a “programmed escalation backed by regional and international quarters, aimed at derailing” the peace process initiated by UN- Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
An unidentified activist in Homs told al-Jazeera that the explosion might have occurred within the building, confirming the government version.
Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Britain-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who also put the toll at 16, said the cause of the blast was not clear and urged an investigation by UN ceasefire monitors.
The expatriate opposition Syrian National Council called for the UN Security Council to issue a resolution providing for the protection of civilians. The organisation said 103 people had died in Hama in recent days.
French foreign minister Alain Juppé said he would press the security council to adopt a resolution authorising military action “to restore international peace and security” if Damascus failed to abide by the ceasefire, imposed by Mr Annan on April 12th. He admitted such a measure was likely to be blocked by Russia and China.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, accused rebels allied to al-Qaeda of “waging large-scale terror in the region” with the aim of “killing as many peaceful civilians as possible”. A video posted by activists, who said it showed a regime opponent being buried alive by soldiers in uniform, could not be verified.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said yesterday that a volunteer was shot dead on Tuesday while riding in a clearly marked ambulance in Douma. “We are saddened and extremely shocked by the death of Muhammad al-Khadraa,” said Dr Abdel Rahman al-Attar, president of the organisation.
This was the third fatality of Red Crescent volunteers in the last eight months. Syria’s official news agency Sanaa said “terrorists” had fired on the ambulance.
