The Syrian authorities said on Thursday a preliminary investigation showed that anti-government armed groups carried out last week’s massacre in Houla, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.
When the massacre took place on May 25-26, Syrian government forces were deployed around Houla, Brigadier General Qassem Jamal Suleiman, head of a special committee set up by the Syrian government to investigate the massacre, told journalists in Damascus.
Some 600-800 anti-regime fighters carried out coordinated attacks against Syrian troops, who never entered Houla’s residential areas, Suleiman said.
“During armed clashes between [anti-government] fighters and the army, the latter did not leave its positions,” he said.
Over 100 people, including dozens of children and women, were killed in Houla, a cluster of villages in Syria’s western Homs province, in what became one of the deadliest single events since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.
Suleiman said those killed in the massacre were members of “families who refused to oppose the government and were at odds with the armed groups.”
The killings triggered international outrage, including strong condemnation by the United Nations Security Council.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said on Tuesday that the pro-Assad “shabbiha” militia was responsible for many of the killings in the massacre, while part of the victims had been killed by artillery shells fired at Houla’s residential areas by government forces.
But Suleiman said on Thursday “there were no people who died as a result of artillery shelling among the victims of the Houla slaughter,” adding that forensic examination revealed no fractured bones and signs of death caused by artillery explosions in victims’ bodies.
