UN OBSERVERS have come under fire as they tried to reach the siteof the latest reported mass killing in Syria - about 80 people, including women and children who were shot orstabbed. The deaths added urgency to diplomatic efforts to end theescalating bloodshed. As reports emerged of what would be the fourth such mass slaying ofcivilians in Syria in the last two weeks, the United States condemned PresidentBashar Assad, saying he has "doubled down on his brutality andduplicity." UN patrols in Syria have on several instances been deliberatelytargeted with heavy weapons, armor-piercing ammunition and asurveillance drone, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council, according to a senior UN official. Theofficial, speaking on condition of anonymity because Thursday'scouncil meeting was private, said Ban also reported repeatedincidents of firing close to UN patrols, apparently to get them towithdraw. International envoy Kofi Annan , whose peace plan brokered in April has not been implemented,warned against allowing "mass killings to become part of everydayreality in Syria." "If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutalrepression, massacres, sectarian violence, and even all-out civilwar," Annan told the U.N. General Assembly in New York . "All Syrians will lose." UN diplomats said Annan was proposing that world powers and keyregional players, including Iran , come up with a new strategy to end the 15-month conflict at aclosed meeting of the Security Council that took place Thursday. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Annan highlighted theurgency of taking action to diffuse the situation. Standing alongside Annan and League of Arab States SecretaryGeneral Nabil Elaraby, Ban echoed the sense of urgency. "The three of us agree: Syria can quickly go from a tipping pointto a breaking point. The danger of full-scale civil war is imminentand real, with catastrophic consequences for Syria and the region,"Ban warned. Any proposal to resolve the situation, however, must be acceptableto Russia and China , which have protected ally from past U.N. sanctions, as well asthe U.S. and its European allies, they said, speaking on conditionof anonymity because consultations have been private. The latest violence centered on Mazraat al-Qubair, a small farmingcommunity of 160 people, mostly Bedouins, in central Hama province. Activists said the Sunni village is surrounded byAlawite villages. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam andAssad is a member of the sect, while the opposition is dominated bySunnis. A resident said troops shelled the area for five hours Wednesdaybefore government-aligned militiamen known as "shabiha" entered thearea that is known to shelter army defectors, "killing and hacking everyone they could find." Leith Al-Hamwy told The Associated Press by telephone that hesurvived by hiding in an olive grove about 800 meters (yards) fromthe farms as the killings took place. But he said his mother andsix siblings, the youngest 10-year-old twins, did not. "When I came out of hiding and went inside the houses, I saw bodieseverywhere. Entire families either shot or killed with sharp sticksand knives," he said. Al-Hamwy would not give his exact location or real name, fearingfor his safety, but said he was waiting for U.N. observers to cometo the farm. Al-Hamwy's account could not be independentlyconfirmed or corroborated by other eyewitnesses. He said the gunmen set his family home on fire and his familyburned to death, huddled in a concrete attic above their bathroom,where they stored food provisions. Around 80 people in total died,he said, many of them children, and that most of the villages 20homes were either destroyed by the shelling or burned down. "There's flesh of animals and humans scattered, the smell of smokefrom burning houses and bodies," al-Hamwy said. Syria's main opposition group in exile, the Syrian NationalCouncil, also said 78 people were killed in Mazraat al-Qubair whengovernment-aligned militiamen converged on the village fromneighboring pro-regime villages. Some of the dead were shot in thehead, others were slain with knives, the SNC said. It said 35 ofthe dead were from the same family and more than half of them werewomen and children. "Women and children were burned inside their homes in al-Qubair,"said Mousab Alhamadee, an activist based in Hama. Syria denied the opposition claims as "absolutely baseless." Theexact death toll and circumstances of the killings reportedovernight in Mazraat al-Qubair were impossible to confirm. One YouTube video purported to show the bodies of babies, children and twowomen wrapped in blankets and lined with frozen bottles of water toslow decomposition. Another row of bodies lay elsewhere: a grandmother, a mother, andfive siblings and two cousins, according to the video narrator. Allthe corpses were neatly wrapped in white sheets, more frozen waterbottles tucked among them. One toddler's arm covered her face.Their names were scrawled on pieces of paper and tucked into theirshrouds. In another video were four blackened objects that the narrator saidwere the remains of a mother and two children who were shelled intheir home. The authenticity of the videos could not be independently verified.Attempts to reach more witnesses and residents of the area weredifficult. The Syrian government keeps tight restrictions onjournalists. A government statement published on the state-run news agency SANAsaid "an armed terrorist group committed an appalling crime" inMazraat al-Qubair, killing nine women and children. It saidresidents appealed for protection from Hama authorities, who wentto the farm and stormed a hideout of the group and clashed withthem. The statement said all members of the armed group were killed inclashes, adding that the incident was meant to pressure the Syrianregime ahead of the UN meeting. Secretary-General Ban said UN observers were initially deniedaccess to the scene in central Hama and "were shot at with smallarms" while trying to get there. The observers were forced to turn back and were not injured,although one vehicle was hit and slightly damaged, said KieranDwyer, spokesman for the UN peacekeeping department. They were notable to enter Mazraat al-Qubair, he added. It was not clear who wasbehind the shooting. On May 25, more than 100 people were killed in one day in a clusterof villages known as Houla in central Homs province, many of them children and women gunned down in theirhomes. U.N. investigators blamed pro-government gunmen for at leastsome of the killings, but the Syrian regime denied responsibilityand blamed rebels for the deaths. On May 30, 13 bound corpses in Deir el-Zour province, while on June1, 11 workers were found shot to death near the town of Qusair inHoms province. The Houla massacre brought international outrage and a coordinatedexpulsion of Syrian diplomats from world capitals. Ban called the latest reported mass killing "shocking andsickening," saying "each day seems to bring new additions to thegrim catalog of atrocities." He said it has been evident for months that Assad and hisgovernment "have lost all legitimacy," adding that "any regime orleader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost itsfundamental humanity." The White House issued a strong condemnation. "Assad's continued abdication of responsibility for these horrificacts has no credibility and only further underscores theillegitimate and immoral nature of his rule," press secretary JayCarney said. Speaking in Turkey after meeting foreign ministers and envoys from 16 European,Turkish and Arab partners, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined principles that included Assad's eventual ouster anddeparture from Syria. "Assad has doubled down on his brutality and duplicity, and Syriawill not, cannot be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic untilAssad goes," she said. British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted more must be done to isolate Assad's regime and show that"the whole world" wants to see political transition in Syria andcondemns "absolutely" the Syrian regime. Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby, who also addressed the UN General Assembly,urged all Arab states to recall their ambassadors and halt alldiplomatic contact with the Syrian government. Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said an unjustifiablemassacre was taking place in his country, but the government is notresponsible. He also said "the government of Syria has spared noefforts to implement its part of the Kofi Annan plan." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Security Council would not support a militaryintervention in Syria. "There will be no mandate for foreignintervention. I guarantee it," he was quoted by Russian newsagencies as saying in Kazakhstan. In Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero saidministers from the so-called "Friends of Syria" countries - manyEuropean and Arab nations - would meet in the French capital July 6to help support the Annan plan. I am an expert from pneumatic-equipments.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Pneumatic Tube Fittings , China Pneumatic Air Cylinders, Pneumatic Tube Fittings,and more.
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