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Video posted on YouTube on Wednesday showed a convoy of damaged United Nations vehicles leaving a town in northern Syria.
Syrian activists claimed that government forces moved tanks into a northern town on Wednesday, in clear violation of a cease-fire agreement, just after the departure of a team of United Nations observers.
The activists told Kelly McEvers, a correspondent for National Public Radio in neighboring Lebanon, that video uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday — showing five tanks engaged in offensive operations — was recorded in Khan Sheikhoun, the town where an explosion struck the U.N. team’s convoy the day before.
As my colleagues Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad reported, when the U.N. observers paid a visit to Khan Sheikhoun, north of their base in the nearby city of Hama, on Tuesday, their presence appeared to embolden mourners at a funeral for a man killed by government forces this week.
Video posted online later that day appeared to show that the mourners, perhaps feeling that they were under the protection of the international observers, had dared to voice their hatred for President Bashar al-Assad right in front of the security forces — until a barrage of shots was fired, scattering the protesters and killing as many as 20 people, according to witness accounts.
Activists in Khan Sheikhoun told Ms. McEvers on Wednesday that the video journalist who had recorded the attack on the protesters near a government checkpoint was among the dead.
Shortly after the security forces opened fire on the demonstration, an explosion tore through a group of protesters who had gathered around the U.N. vehicles, according to a witness who spoke to Shakeeb Al-Jabri, a Syrian activist and blogger in Beirut. Video recorded as that blast went off was also posted on YouTube on Tuesday.
As the BBC reported, a Syrian television station that supports the Assad government denied that the U.N. convoy had been attacked by government forces, blaming armed opposition forces. According to a report from Al-Ayyam, a Syrian opposition news site, when the observers decided to stay in Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday night, state television “told its audience the monitors were being held as hostages by what it called fundamentalist terrorists.”
While activists insisted that government forces were responsible for the blast that struck the U.N. convoy, Al-Ayyam noted that video posted online later in the day showed a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army taking credit for a subsequent revenge attack on the government checkpoint, and the destruction of a tank there.
A spokesman for the U.N. mission in Syria who announced the departure of the observers from Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday made no attempt to assign responsibility for the attack on the convoy, but described the bomb as “an improvised explosive device.”
Activists in the town told Mr. Jabri that they were disappointed that the observers had not honored a commitment to immediately correct the report that they had been held hostage.
One also complained to Ms. McEvers on Wednesday that the arrival of the U.N. team had made the situation in the town far worse than it had been before, leading him to question the effectiveness of the observer mission.
“I think we should ask the monitors to leave #Syria,” said Khan Sheikhoun activist. “Before they came the town was bad. Now it is burning.”
— Kelly McEvers (@kellymcevers) 16 May 12
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