Syrian forces 'carrying out mass arrests and executions' in Homs

Damascus, Mar 6(ANI): Syrian forces are carrying out mass arrests and summary executions in Baba Amr, Homs, growing evidence has suggested.

Accounts of atrocities came to light in the wake of the Syrian regime's breaking an earlier assurance and banning the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from entering Baba Amr, which was captured by the army.

A Homs resident described how his 17-year-old cousin was caught up in a bloody reprisal attack in Baba Amr carried out by government troops.

"They laid the men on the ground. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and their faces pressed to the floor The soldiers began jumping and dancing across the bodies of the alive men, and hitting them on their backs with their rifle butts," The Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

"They used bayonets on the ends of their guns to stab the men in the back. One grabbed a prisoner by the hair and slit his throat," he added.

A Syrian woman said that the security forces slit the throat of her 12-year-old son after the rebels had retreated from Baba Amr.

She claimed 35 other men and boys had been detained and killed in the same attack.

These accounts, however, cannot be independently verified.

The videos posted online and the accounts of civilians who have fled into neighbouring Lebanon indicate growing violence on protestors.

A video, posted the day after Baba Amr was captured, shows a pile of male corpses in a truck. Their bodies are wrapped in blankets and carpeted by falling snow, their faces bearing what appear to be stab wounds.

Meanwhile, Syria bowed to international pressure and has allowed the United Nations under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, Baroness Amos, to visit Damascus. (ANI)