The United Nations Security Council is preparing a press statement condemning a massacre of more than 100 people in the Syrian neighborhood of Houla, a source in the Security Council said.
“We still have some issues to discuss,” the diplomat said, speaking on conditions of anonymity, as Security Council members gathered for a closed-door emergency meeting on late on Sunday to discuss the massacre.
General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, told the Council members during a video link that 108 people, including more than 30 children under the age of 10, had been killed in Houla, a cluster of villages in the Homs province, on Friday and Saturday.
The Council’s statement will be based on Mood’s report, the diplomat said.
Syrian activists have blamed the massacre on troops loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad. They said regime forces had fired mortar shells into the area following large anti-government demonstrations on Friday.
Diplomats quoted Mood as saying the observers had confirmed that artillery and tank shells were fired at residential houses in Houla.
But the Syrian authorities have strongly denied their involvement, saying “terrorists” were to blame for the tragedy.
Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told journalists on Sunday that "hundreds of armed men" had attacked Houla on Friday and clashed with government forces.
"They used heavy weapons and anti-tank rockets," he was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying. "That's why we lost some of our men from the security forces.”
He insisted that "no Syrian artillery or heavy weaponry" had been used in Houla.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Sunday the events in Houla require “careful investigation,” while Russia's deputy UN Ambassador Alexander Pankin told journalists before the closed-door meeting that “there is substantial ground to believe that the majority of those who were killed were either slashed, cut by knives, or executed at point-blank distance.”
