Syria’s death toll from violent crackdown rises sharply as U.N. action urged

Syrians living in Jordan shout slogans against President Bashar al-Assad, during a demonstration in front of the Syrian embassy in Amman. (Reuters)

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By Al Arabiya with Agencies

Six people were killed early on Wednesday near the Syrian city of Hama after their car was hit by a mortar shell, Al Arabiya reported citing activists at the Syrian Coordination Committees. The new deaths raise the death toll of violent crackdown on protesters within the past 24 hours to 47 people, mostly in Idlib, Al Arabiya said.
The bloodshed in the northern province of Idlib, which borders Turkey, highlighted the accelerating violence in Syria where an insurgency has begun to overshadow what started as peaceful street protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s 11-year rule.

Syrian activist Ammar Qurabi told Al Arabiya that a road map has already been planned for establishing safe corridors on the Syrian-Turkish borders. He said that the Turkish government was only waiting for an Arab and regional cover to apply the planned road map. “However, as more civilians are killed in Syria, Turkey might ask for a cover from the NATO,” he said.

The United Nations’ Navi Pillay said the death toll was 1,000 higher than an estimate she released 10 days earlier. It includes civilians, army defectors and those executed for refusing to shoot civilians, but not soldiers or security personnel killed by opposition forces, she said, according to Reuters.

The Syrian government has said more than 1,100 members of the army, police and security services have been killed and state media reported 17 military funerals on Tuesday for victims of “terrorist armed groups.”

Pillay said Syria’s actions could constitute crimes against humanity, issuing a fresh call for the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said:

“The situation is totally unacceptable. The brutal repression of civilians must stop. Assad must listen to his people, to his neighbors, to the Arab partners, to Europe, to the world. We all have the same message: he should stop the violence against his own people and let the transition begin.”

The sharp rise in the death toll is bound to lend weight to those arguing for increased international intervention to stop the bloodshed in Syria which some fear is increasingly drifting towards civil war.

Assad, 46, whose minority Alawite family has held power over majority Sunni Muslim Syria for four decades, faces the most serious challenge to his rule from the turmoil which erupted in the southern city of Deraa on March 18.

A violent security crackdown failed to halt the unrest -- inspired by popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya -- which turned bloodier in the last few months as defecting soldiers join armed civilians in fighting back in some areas. 

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