AMMAN (Reuters) – Syria‘s President Bashar al-Assad faces growing pressure for blocking humanitarian aid and human rights abuses, with the UN humanitarian chief set to visit the country this week and the broadcast of harrowing pictures said to show torture victims at a hospital in the embattled city of Homs
Secretly shot video footage aired yesterday by a British television station shows what it said were Syrian patients being tortured by medical staff at a state-run hospital in Homs.
The video, which Channel 4 said it could not independently verify, showed wounded, blindfolded men chained to beds. A rubber whip and electrical cable lay on a table in one of the wards. Some patients showed what looked like signs of having been severely beaten.
US Senator John McCain said the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centres in Syria through air strikes on Assad’s forces.
“The ultimate goal of air strikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organize and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” McCain, an influential Republican who previously has called for arming the Syrian opposition, said in remarks on the Senate floor.
The United Nations says more than 7,500 civilians have died in Syria’s crackdown on protests against Assad’s government.
UN humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos said on Monday that the Syrian government had agreed to allow her to visit the conflict-wracked country later this week, an announcement that followed sharp international criticism of Damascus for not letting her into the country.
“As requested by the Secretary-General (Ban Ki-moon), my aim is to urge all parties to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so that they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies,” she said in a statement.
Amos said she plans to be in Syria from Wednesday to Friday.
Syria’s decision to allow Amos into the country comes after intensifying international criticism, including a rare rebuke of Damascus by the UN Security Council last week for failing to grant the UN humanitarian chief access to Syrian conflict zones.
It was not immediately clear whether Amos would have the unhindered access she has been demanding. Several Western diplomats told Reuters privately that they were concerned Damascus appeared to have waited until it “finished the job” by decimating Homs before allowing Amos into the country.
Britain’s Channel 4 said it had obtained footage of shocking scenes at the military hospital in Homs, filmed covertly by an employee and smuggled out by a French photojournalist identified only as “Mani.”
“I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs. They twist the feet until the leg breaks,” the employee who made the video told Mani.
“They operate without anaesthetics … I saw them slamming detainees’ heads against walls. They shackle the patients to beds. They deny them water. Others have their penises tied to stop them from urinating,” the employee said.
Braving army patrols and winter weather, hundreds of Syrians crossed into Lebanon in the past 24 hours to escape the heaviest shelling of their border towns since the uprising against Assad began last March.
In the hillside town of Arsal in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, residents said 100 to 150 families arrived from Syria on Sunday — one of the biggest refugee influxes so far.
Families trekked on foot through snow-capped hills to safety, but many others were caught, one refugee told Reuters.
“My house was bombed and a giant hole was left in one side of the house,” said a 21-year-old man in a black leather jacket and black-and-white scarf from the Syrian town of Qusair.
Syria has so far brushed off international pressure to halt its violent response to an uprising that was inspired by revolts that have toppled four Arab autocrats in the past 12 months.
The UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, will travel to Damascus on Saturday for what would be his first visit since he was named to the post last month.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped a meeting with Arab counterparts in Cairo on Saturday would bring the world closer to agreement on how to end the bloodshed, but gave no sign Moscow would stop protecting its old ally Assad.
