Reports Name Assad’s Supporters as Only Victim of Terrorist Attack in Houla

The victims of the several-hour-long terrorist attacks in Syria’s Houla region on Friday were all from the supporters of President Bashar Assad, a senior Arab media source familiar with the situation in Syria said.

“Isn’t it strange that all the children killed in Houla are from al-Kard tribe and their families were all supporters of the government,” Hossein Morteza who runs an Arab-language TV bureau in Damascus told FNA on Monday.

He also said that the occurrence of such crimes concurrent with the visit of UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan to Syria and the UN Security Council’s meeting on the situation in the Arab country as well as the western media’s unfounded reports which blame the Syrian government for today’s crime reveal who is behind the massacre of the innocent people in the Arab country.

Earlier today, a prominent Syrian legislator took the Tunisian, Libyan and Afghan mercenaries responsible for the massacre in the central area of Houla in Syria in which over 100 civilians, including children, were killed.

“The armed anti-government people committed the crime, among whom hirelings from Tunisia, Libya and Afghanistan were also seen,” Mohammad Zahir Qanoum told FNA.

Qanoum said that he could gain the information from the local eye-witnesses who had seen the killers and were sure about their foreign identity.

He also reiterated that the Army is not responsible for the crime and the Syrian government forces fought the terrorists to save the civilian people from the assault.

Friday’s assault on the central area of Houla was one of the bloodiest single events in Syria’s 15-month-old unrests, and gruesome images of dozens of children killed in the attacks prompted a wave of international outrage.

The UN said 32 children under the age of 10 were among the dead.

Syrian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jihad Makdissi on Sunday categorically denied responsibility of government forces for the massacre, and said Syria is being subjected to a “tsunami of lies”. His remarks came after some Saudi and Qatari media outlets alleged that the massacre had been done by the Syrian army.

“Hundreds of heavily armed gunmen carrying machine guns, mortars and anti-tank missiles” launched a simultaneous attack against five army positions from several locations, starting about 2 pm and continuing for nine hours. Three soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded, Makdissi said.

“There were no Syrian tanks or artillery in the vicinity” of Houla, Makdissi said. He said that gunmen used anti-tank missiles and “Syrian troops retaliated in defense of their positions”.

“Children, women and other innocent people were killed in their homes, and this is not what the Syrian army does,” Makdissi said. “The method of killing was brutal.”

Makdissi said a committee was set up to investigate the attack, and results should be out within three days.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria.

The US daily, Washington Post, reported that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad’s government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

According to the report, material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.

Opposition activists who two months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said earlier this month that the flow of weapons – most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past – has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.