“Across the street I saw my friend Shafiq, 13 years old, outside standing alone,” it quoted him as saying. “An armed man in military uniform grabbed him and put him at the corner of a house. He took his own weapon and shot him in the head.
“His mother and big sister – I think she was 14 years old – went outside and started shouting and crying. The same man shot at both of them more than once.”
Meanwhile government forces shelled the city of Hama, north of Houla, until 5am on Monday morning after the Free Syrian Army there launched a series of raids on army checkpoints.
It was one of the heaviest barrages against the city since the start of the uprising.
Artillery smashed civilian neighborhoods where armed opposition groups had been hiding. Snipers infiltrated peripheral buildings using vantage points on rooftops.
“The army has surrounded the districts. Families tried to flee but no one is allowed to leave. They are killing anyone that is moving on the street,” said Samer al-Hussain from the Hama News Agency.
An activist who called himself Abu Adnan al-Hamwi, speaking from one of the besieged areas, said: “The sounds of explosions did not stop all day, and as a result of the violent and arbitrary shelling, several houses were destroyed with residents still inside.”
Dozens of civilians were rushed to makeshift field clinics, but with few doctors and almost no medicine there was little that could be done. Video footage posted online by activists showed rooms filled with casualties.
The mutilated bodies of men, women and children lay on bloodstained floors, some dead, some still alive as doctors looked on helplessly.
“They can only do basic first aid and try to stop the bleeding,” ‘Abu Adnan’ said. “There is almost no equipment, or medicines. There are no painkillers.”
Government hospitals in Hama remained open, but residents refused to take their wounded there for fear they would be deemed rebels and killed.
“The regime is not distinguishing between Free Syrian Army and civilians.
All of Hama has protested against the government, so now we are all enemies,” said Mousab al Hamadee from Hama Local Coordinating Committee, By early morning on Monday the guns had fallen silent and the shelling stopped. Smoke rose over the smashed districts and troops stormed the neighborhood of al-Arbeen, setting alight to homes and arresting the remaining residents, activists said.
In other areas, where guerrilla groups affiliated with the Free Syrian Army are still hiding, residents dug holes in the ground to bury their dead, and prepared for the next onslaught.
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