Syria Crisis: Violence Continues in Idlib Province Despite Truce

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon says Syria needs to fully cooperate with the preliminary accord which outlines the rules for the deployment of a UN observer mission to the country.

But despite the truce agreed with the international envoy, Kofi Annan, attacks are on the rise.

The BBC’s Ian Pannell has just returned from Idlib Province in Syria, where people have been accusing the government of consistently breaking its promises by attacking civilian areas.

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Lisa Mullins: In Syria widespread protests were reported today. Opposition activists there say government troops opened fire on protestors, killing several in cities around the country. United Nations officials are pressuring the Syrian government to respect the UN backed ceasefire agreed to earlier, but the violations continue. The BBC’s Ian Pannell sent this report after visiting the town of Taftanaz in Syria’s Idlib Province.

Ian Pannell: On April 1 Syria agreed to Kofi Annan’s peace plan, the world was told that the government had given assurances, it had moved no further into populated areas.

Unknown male: [speaking Arabic]

Pannell: But in a pattern of broken promises it then unleashed a whirlwind of destruction and death just two days later when the soldiers rolled into the town of Taftanaz.

Male/Interpreter: [speaking Arabic] I woke up on the morning of the third of April and heard the sound of exclusions and shootings. I called my friends and they told me that their shelling and shooting in the town and so I started filming. Attacks into the town at 7:30 in the morning and then in the afternoon the armored vehicles drove in and soldiers entered.

Pannell: I just walked into the main mosque in Taftanaz and it’s a scene of incredible devastation. You can see a shell, a tank round possibly had gone through one of the main side walls and you can see shrapnel marks embedded deep into the walls. This is also where 57 people killed inside Taftanaz were brought to be identified and eventually laid to rest. Can you just show us on his head where he was hit? We met the man they call the living martyr in Taftanaz. Abu Azaz says he was rounded up, his hands were bound, he was made to face a wall and then he was shot three times in the head and left for dead. His scars are clearly visible and his jaw droops from where it was smashed. Miraculously the bullets went through his cheek and although a very sick man, he is alive.

Abu Azaz/Interpreter: There were four of us, including two old men. They said my crime was that I didn’t tell them there was a makeshift hospital next to my house. Then they shot all of us.

Pannell: Men like Abu Azaz take the risk to speak out because they hope it’ll make a difference, that at some point the world will take notice. Amin[SP] is a fighter with the Free Syrian Army. He took me around what remains of his home after it was set afire by the troops.

Amin: We have first the cleaning of my house inside and you can see the outside what’s happened here.

Pannell: Just to describe the scene, every single wall and ceiling in this apartment are blackened from the smoke. There is nothing left. The heat was obviously so intense that the floor is broken and there’s just a skeletal metal bed frame left from his bed.

Amin: We are homeless. Where’s United Nations? What did the UN give us? Nothing, just killing.

Pannell: 57 people are thought to have died here in just two days. FIghters and civilians, men and women, young and old. They’re buried in two mass graves in the town cemeteries. We met one young man who was paying his respects to his brother, one of two siblings to be killed in the last year. Why did they attack Taftanaz?

Male: Because we want freedom. I wonder myself, because we want freedom.

Pannell: Is this the end of the revolution?

Male: No, no, we’re still going to demonstrate until the last one of us. The whole world knows that, but no one supports us except Allah.

Pannell: This was an attempt to crush the opposition that not only failed to dim the call for change, it’s made the prospects for peace even more remote. Positions have hardened and it proved there’s no common ground with the government. And although the violence has abated, attacks on places like Taftanaz are continuing. One week after the ceasefire was supposed to take affect.

Mullins: The BBC’s Ian Pannell reporting on the situation in Syria’s Idlib Province

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