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32 Killed in Syria as 23 Slain 'Torture Victims' Found near Idlib
[An Nahar] Syrian security forces killed at least 32 people on Thursday as the bodies of 23 torture victims were found near the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria that security forces captured earlier this week, activists said.

"Twenty-three bodies with marks of extreme torture were found near Mazraat Wadi Khaled, west of the city of Idlib," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in a statement.

The Britannia-based group said the 23 blindfolded and handcuffed victims had been rubbed out.

It also reported that security forces on Thursday killed nine civilians, including four in a car, and four rebels across the province of Idlib.

But the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, gave a higher corpse count, saying at least 32 people were killed across the country, among them 29 in Idlib alone.

Elsewhere, one person was killed in the central province of Hama, one in the northern province of Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
and another in the southern province of Daraa, the LCC said.

In Aleppo and on the outskirts of Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
, security forces broke up scattered anti-regime protests on Thursday, according to the LCC.

The city of Idlib fell to government forces on Tuesday night, two weeks after the regime stormed the Baba Amr district of Homs city in central Syria, following a month-long blitz that activists said left hundreds dead.

Syrian activists have compiled a list of 114 civilians killed since security forces launched their assault on Idlib on March 10, Human Rights Watch
... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
said on Thursday.

Following the Baba Amr offensive, residents of nearby neighborhoods reported finding the mutilated bodies of women and kiddies. Activists posted video footage they said proved regime forces were to blame.

The government blamed "armed terrorist gangs."

Human Rights Watch stepped in to demand an end to the "scorched earth methods" being deployed by Assad, and insist that China and Russia stop blocking U.N. efforts to take tough action.

Posted by: Fred 2012-03-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=341048