Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Inaction is a "Licence for Further Massacres"

Protesters in Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus tear down a poster of President Assad --- 13 refugees reportedly were slain on Friday by Syrian security forces

See also Bahrain Opinion: The Regime's Propaganda Machine is Cranked Up to Eleven
Friday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A New "Massacre"?

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2039 GMT: Syria. Journalist Martin Chulov adds this important note to his published article on the mass killing in Tremseh (see 2009 GMT):

Spoke to 2 #Tremseh residents present during massacre. They said some attacking soldiers tried to defect & were executed #Syria

— Martin Chulov (@martinchulov) July 14, 2012

2009 GMT: Syria. A far different account by Martin Chulov of The Guardian than that in The New York Times (see 1905 GMT) about Thursday's mass killing in Tremseh:

Two eyewitnesses from Tremseh who spoke to the Observer yesterday blamed regime forces and the pro-regime militia, the Shabiha, for the attack, which has seen many of its residents flee and left more than 100 people missing. "We don't understand why they attacked us," said a local woman, Umm Khaled. "We haven't brought harm to the region. All we've done here is hold demonstrations."

Umm Khaled, who had lived in Tremseh – a Sunni Muslim enclave – all her life, said people trying to flee through nearby fields were shot dead as they ran. She claims some of the bodies were taken away by regime forces and that others were handcuffed, then summarily executed....

The two Tremseh residents strongly denied the regime's claims that their town either supported, or had been subverted by, a terrorist group. Both insisted that the anti-regime guerrilla force, the Free Syria Army, did not have a strong presence in town.

"I swear that we don't have any terrorists, Salafists, or anyone from the outside here," said Umm Khaled. "People have been terrified ever since (regime forces) came to the village in January and killed 40 of us. This time they stole from our homes, they robbed jewellery from women. All of this because we support the revolution?"

A second Tremseh resident, who wanted to be known only as Mohammed, said: "The bombardment started at 5.30am and ended at 2pm. The incursion started at midday from the north of the village. Shabiha and regime military men entered the village and occupied the roofs of high buildings and shot at anything moving.

"They shot many civilians in the head and then burnt the bodies. They hand-cuffed civilians and then shot them in the head. They burnt shops and houses with families inside. After what happened, the FSA members tried to get inside the village to help out with burying the martyrs and tending to the wounded but they couldn't.

"The criminals took many martyrs' bodies and wounded civilians with them and there are many missing people and burnt dead bodies with no way to identify them."

1909 GMT: Egypt. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has met President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo.

No details have been offered, with reports passing on platitudes such as Clinton's support for the "full transition" to civilian rule with "dialogue and compromise, real politics" and US "support [for] the democratically elected government...to help make it a success in delivering results for the people of Egypt".

"Things change (at) kind of warp speed," Clinton reportedly told Morsi. The Egyptian President said, "We are very, very keen to meet you and happy that you are here."

1905 GMT: Syria. Back from a break to find a shaky, sketchily-sourced article in The New York Times claiming to rewrite the story of Thursday's mass killing in Tremseh, "New Details of a Battle Challenge Reports of a Syrian Massacre".

1502 GMT: Syria. The latest diary entry from "Rafeeq" about life in Homs, narrating how he and four flatmates are coping with outages of water and electricity and then explaining:

I felt grateful for having flatmates. Nobody but them can really understand what it means for someone to live for days without basic needs that everybody else take for granted.

But as important as it is to have them around, we have recently decided that we should stay as separated as possible from each other.

To film footage or snap photos in the streets, for example, we try to go out separately and at different times.

The idea is: we do not want to die all at once.

We are some of the few citizen journalists left in Homs. Our deaths would be tragic for many residents in the area because that would mean their voices would no longer be heard by the outside world.

1452 GMT: Bahrain. Back from a break to find news of a rally in London in support of the Bahraini opposition --- here MP Jeremy Corbyn addresses the crowd:

1038 GMT: Syria. State news agency SANA claims a "suicide terrorist" blew up a booby-trapped car in Mahrada in Hama Province, causing three civilians and a security officer.

Opposition activists reported earlier that seven people had died in the town today.

SANA has also modified its story on the mass killing in Tremseh on Thursday. Earlier it said that "armed terrorists" had killed 50 people in the town, carrying out the massacre because there was no army presence. Now it asserts from "a military source":

Some of the armed forces units on Thursday morning carried out a "qualitative operation" in al-Treimseh town in the countryside of Hama province that targeted the gatherings of terrorist groups' members as well as a number of their leadership's whereabouts and dens which they used as a springboard for their criminal acts and a base for torturing kidnapped citizens.

The operation, the source said, came in response to the pleads of the inhabitants of al-Treimseh town who had been exposed to various forms of criminal acts at the hands of armed terrorist groups including acts of killing and terrorizing in addition to exploding a number of houses.

The operation was carried out after a process of monitoring and accurate information gathering in cooperation with the residents, the source added.

It said the terrorist groups' dens were destroyed and a big number of their members were killed in the operation, while scores of them were arrested. Large amounts of weapons and documents, including IDs for non-Syrian persons, one of them Turkish, were seized.

1029 GMT: Syria. C.J.Chivers of The New York Times describes a meeting in Turkey of insurgent commanders "focused on the basics of waging war against President Bashar al-Assad":

One complaint throughout was that the Syrian National Council, the coalition of exile opposition groups based in Istanbul, was disconnected from the battles fought on the ground. Another was contained in the field commanders’ suspicion that unnamed members of the Syrian political opposition in Turkey were either diverting funds or playing favorites in funneling weapons and money across the border.

“Yesterday we were supposed to receive mortars and cartridges,” said another commander, Issam Afara, addressing his peers. “But we didn’t receive them. I called and demanded: Where are they? Where?”

1024 GMT: Bahrain. Security forces in action in Ma'ameer --- kicking down a door to raid a house, putting on balaclavas before entering, and firing as they walk down streets littered with tear gas canisters:

0951 GMT: Saudi Arabia. United Nations sources have confirmed that UN observers, confined to headquarters in Damascus since last month, have inspected the site of Thursday's mass killing in Tremseh.

0948 GMT: Saudi Arabia. Activists are claiming that 17-year-old Abdullah Jaafar al-Lajami was killed in Awwmiya in Eastern Province last night, his body dumped in a toilet --- a graphic photograph and video have been circulated.

The official Saudi Press Agency said security forces "shot and killed a man who was among a group that opened fire and hurled a fire-bomb at a police station".

A Ministry of Interior spokesman said four members of the security forces were wounded in a separate attack by masked gunmen on motor-bikes who fired at two patrols in the village of Sehat early on Saturday.

0945 GMT: Syria. The Local Coordination Committees of Syria reports that 22 people have already been killed by security forces today, including seven in the Damascus suburb of Douma, seven in Mahrada in Hama Province, and seven in Homs Province.

0545 GMT: Syria. A day after the revelation of the mass killing in Tremseh --- with United Nations envoy Kofi Annan and the head of the UN observers, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, both putting responsibility on regime forces --- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called on the Security Council to take "collective and decisive action to immediately and fully stop the tragedy unfolding".  Failure to do so would be "a licence for further massacres".

On Friday, a reliable activist posted the names of 103 people slain in Tremseh. Opposition groups have put out estimates of deaths from 150 to 220. Syrian State media claims that 50 people were killed by "armed terrorists" and that the bloodshed would not have occurred if regime forces had been in the town.

The Local Coordination Committees reported that 80 people were killed by security forces on Friday, including 28 in Idlib Province, 14 in Homs Province, 13 in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, and 12 in Aleppo Province.