Mick Hartley

Antony Loyd in the Times (£) reports on a massacre carried out by Syrian troops:

The Syrian villagers numbered 124 when they entered the narrow valley to hide from forces loyal to President Assad. Six hours of shelling and machinegun-fire turned the ravine into a graveyard from which only 13 escaped alive.

Halfway through the slaughter, a group of 20 men led by a local imam attempted to approach the troops, to negotiate. All were executed on the spot. A soldier speared the imam through the throat with his bayonet.

The accounts of the killings of 111 men in the Abu-dmayah valley on December 20 — surely one of the worst of the many atrocities committed since the start of the Syrian revolution ten months ago — were given by four survivors who crossed into Turkey last week. They had been on the run in the Jebel al-Zawiyah mountain range of northwestern Syria.

Their eyewitness testimony, supported by video footage taken by locals at the scene, paints one of the most vivid and detailed accounts of a war crime to have emerged from the country so far.  […]

A total of 111 bodies were recovered and taken to the mosque in Khafr Owaid for burial. Video footage shows rows of dead men in civilian clothes lying on the floor on blankets. Among them is the corpse of the imam, his throat clearly slashed.

Though of course this could all be part of the West's propaganda war against Syria that Jonathan Steele was telling us about.