U.N. observers find the stench of death

BEIRUT – Smoldering buildings, looted shops, smashed cars and a strong stench of death greeted U.N. observers who entered the nearly deserted Syrian town of Haffa on Thursday, a day after President Bashar Assad’s forces overran it as part of a major offensive to recover rebel-controlled territories.

The monitors had been trying to get into the town for a week after fears were raised that a brutal assault by regime forces was under way. They found the main hospital burned, state buildings and an office of the ruling Baath party in ruins and a corpse lying in the street.

“A strong stench of dead bodies was in the air,” said Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the U.N. observers. She said there was still fighting in some pockets of the mountainous town in the seaside province of Latakia.

The number of casualties was unclear, Ghosheh said, and it appeared likely that, as in the past, bodies had been removed or buried before the U.N. mission got in.

The siege of Haffa, a Sunni-populated village, had become a focus of international concern because of fears the uprising against Assad is evolving into a sectarian civil war pitting his minority Alawite sect against the majority Sunnis and other groups. Recent mass killings in other Sunni-populated areas have fed those concerns.

The fighting, now mostly quelled in Haffa, was mirrored in other parts of Syria, where more than 40 civilians and opposition fighters were killed Thursday, according to activists, alongside more than a half-dozen Syrian forces.

From the day’s early hours, Syrian troops bombarded rebel-held areas with tanks, mortars and helicopters in the central town of Rastan, the Damascus suburb of Douma, the central city of Homs and the northern towns of Anadan and Hreitan, near the Turkish border, the activists said.

They said the fighting included clashes in the town of Hamuriya, near Damascus, that killed at least nine men who were allegedly butchered with knives. A video circulated by activists showed a pile of lifeless men, including one who was clearly slashed through the neck.

“Slaughter, slaughter!” a person could be heard screaming in the background. Another video showed a man lying in a garden, his arm blown off. There was no way to independently confirm the content of the videos because reporters are not allowed to work freely in Syria.

For more than a week, Syrian troops have been sweeping through villages and towns in Syria’s northern, central, southern and seaside provinces, attacking rebel-held areas and opposition strongholds in what appears to be the largest offensive since an internationally-brokered cease-fire went into effect two months ago. The regime and the opposition have both largely ignored the April 12 truce.

The U.N. observers’ description of the smoldering ruins they found in Haffa suggested Syrian forces were using intense force to quell rebels. But it also indicated the rebels were determined to smash all symbols of the hated Assad regime, including state institutions.

“Most government institutions, including the post office, were set on fire from inside,” Ghosheh said in a statement. “Archives were burnt, stores were looted and set on fire.”

She said homes were broken into, while the ruling Baath party headquarters was shelled.