QUBAIR, Syria — UN monitors finally reached the site of an alleged new massacre Friday on their second try, with accompanying reporters describing gutted buildings and dead animals but no identifiable human bodies.
“Clearly something ghastly has happened here,” said a Sky News correspondent at the scene.
“We have made it in 50, 60 hours after the event, and that means there has been ample time to clear up…
“In one house we found blood splashed up against the walls, amid blood-soaked blankets and children’s clothes and toys… It is uninhabitable here. The smell of death lingers, although it is not clear if this is from animals or people.”
Paul Danahar, a BBC correspondent traveling with the UN convoy, reported seeing gutted buildings in Qubair but no signs of life.
“The stench of burnt flesh is still strong,” he wrote in a message on Twitter.
“In front of me there is a piece of brain, in the corner there is a mass (of) congealed blood,” he wrote. “In front of a burnt out building is carcass of a donkey inside the buildings are gutted. The UN have not found any people yet.
“Whoever did this may have acted with mindless violence but attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated & clear.”
He quoted activists as saying government forces had removed the bodies of the victims on Thursday while the UN observers were being hindered, reportedly by small arms fire, from reaching the village.
“The only clue to where the bodies of the people may have gone are etched into the road,” he tweeted. “UN said they were tracks made by military vehicles.”
At least 55 people were killed on Wednesday in an assault on Qubair, a Sunni farming enclave of some 150 people in the central province of Hama, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Damascus government denied responsibility and blamed foreign-backed “terrorists,” its term for rebels fighters.
In new violence on Friday, AFP reported, troops battled to take back the rebel bastion of Khaldiyeh in the central city of Homs, bombarding it “at a rate of five shells a minute,” according to the Observatory.
In all, more than 20 people were reported killed on Friday, including two members of the security forces.
In Washington, where UN-Arab League diplomatic envoy Kofi Annan was to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he said “everyone is looking for a solution” to the Syrian crisis.
Diplomats in New York said Britain, France and the United States would quickly draw up a Security Council resolution proposing sanctions against Syria. “We will move fast to press for a resolution,” a UN diplomat told AFP.
“There will be action in the coming days to get a vote on a resolution which includes measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter — which would mean sanctions,” the diplomat added in comments confirmed by other Security Council envoys.
Chapter VII allows for sanctions and, in extreme cases, military action. Russia and China, infuriated by the NATO campaign in Libya last year, have vowed to oppose any military intervention.