“He had a beautiful house with seven rooms. Six were destroyed in the
bombardment. He was living there with his wife and children and his elderly
mother. It was not easy to escape the attack when you have young children,
and an elderly lady with you. So for three weeks they lived in the remaining
room of the house,” said al-Homsi.
For the past several days, the family had eaten nothing, he added. They had
been forced to collect melting snow for drinking water. With no fuel left
they had huddled together in the bitter cold.
“A colonel and six soldiers entered my cousin’s home. They asked my
cousin’s wife, ‘Who did this to your home?'” reported al-Homsi, who had
spoken to the wife 30 minutes previously. “She said that she knew
nothing, that she and her family had simply been sheltering from the bombs.
“They searched the house for weapons. They were almost kind, saying that
the Red Cross was coming to help. But then they took all the men away,”
said al-Homsi.
His relatives, along with perhaps 400 others were taken to a nearby government
cooperative. “State television was here, and it filmed the men. They
forced them to make interviews, saying that they had been living under siege
by armed terrorist gangs.”
Then al-Homsi said that ten young men were plucked from the crowd. “I
heard gunshots from my home. I called again to know what had happened, the
person I spoke to said the men had been gunned down.”
The killing of 10 men outside the government cooperative in Baba Amr was
reported by multiple sources Friday, although the claims were impossible to
verify.
“As a soldier, when you see young men in Baba Amr, it is like a reason to
kill them,” added al-Homsi. “They think all young men were
fighting against them.”
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