Fears of fresh massacre as Assad forces hit rebel town

The United States on Monday said it feared Bashar al-Assad was preparing to carry out another massacre in an opposition stronghold as his regime unleashed helicopter gunships on rebel cities.

Victoria Nuland, a state department spokesman, voiced "deep alarm" for the fate of Haffa, in the north west near Syria's Turkish border.

The town has become the scene of some of the fiercest fighting yet seen in the conflict, amid reports that tanks and heavy artillery had surrounded it.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations special envoy who put together the collapsed peace deal, said helicopters had strafed rebel positions in Haffa following days of heavy fighting.

Nuland said, "We remind Syrian commanders of one of the lessons from Bosnia: the international community can and does learn what units were responsible for crimes against humanity and you will be held responsible for your actions."

Syria has experienced two massacres recently, with 55 people killed last week in al-Qubeir and at least 108, about half of them children, killed in Houla on May 25. In Haffa, rebels were reported to have killed more than 20 soldiers in one day last week, and 58 in total recently. Video posted online yesterday (Monday) showed the shrouded bodies of 10 children, their mothers weeping over them, who were killed in a bombardment on Saturday.

Sem Nassar, an activist, broke down in tears as she told the AFP news agency that the tanks had "never comes this close before".

Opposition activists in the town of Rastan, which has resisted a siege for a month, also came under close fire from three gunships yesterday, followed by a heavy artillery bombardment. The city of Homs was bombarded as government forces moved to crush the increasingly confident resistance movement.

Last night, Annan warned that a "large number" of civilians were trapped and that he was "gravely concerned" by the "escalation of fighting".

His spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, said, "The special envoy demands that the parties take all steps to ensure that civilians are not harmed, and further demands that entry of the UN military observers be allowed to Haffa immediately."

In a Commons statement yesterday, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, accused Syria of carrying out "savage" and "grotesque" crimes against its people. He said the behaviour of the Assad regime was "morally reprehensible".

Hague told MPs that 87,000 people had fled the country, 15,000 had been killed and thousands of activists had been jailed. "Each day reports emerge of savage crimes," he said. "The Syrian military are surrounding and bombarding towns with heavy weaponry, and then unleashing militia groups to terrorise and murder civilians in their homes.

"These deliberate military tactics are horrifyingly reminiscent of the Balkans in the 1990s."

Hague said Britain was training activists who were recording atrocities. He also said there was evidence that groups linked to al-Qaeda had committed acts of violence to "exacerbate the situation". "We will not rule out any other option which could at any stage stop the bloodshed," he added.

Yesterday the Syrian Network for Human Rights reported 58 deaths in the country, the majority in Idlib province in the north. The town of Rastan has managed to hold out, but yesterday an activist, Walid Mohammed Abeid, told The Daily Telegraph that its situation was desperate. "All our houses are destroyed by the bombing, from the air and heavy guns and cannon," he said. "We ask everyone outside to look in their hearts and help us, please, please, please. We are being killed every day."

A spokesman said that in Qusair, between Homs and the Lebanese border, snipers had shot dead a priest, named as Atallah Ibrahim Bitar, who had worn his robes while taking food to people sheltering, thinking he would be spared.