Syria denies attack on civilians; crisis seen as civil war - Hamilton Spectator

BEIRUT The Syrian government denied Sunday that it had used heavy weapons to attack a small farming community, although UN monitors documented substantial destruction in the village, Tremseh, in an attack that left scores dead and drew international condemnation.

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday, some of the heaviest fighting yet experienced there erupted in a neighborhood about a 20-minute drive southwest of the city center, with activists calling it the first time government forces have shelled rebel holdouts in the capital.

With continual fighting across Syria, replacing what were separate pockets that flared repeatedly, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced in Geneva on Sunday that the conflict could now be classified as a civil war.

In Damascus, in a news conference broadcast by Syrian state television, Jihad Makdissi, spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, said the violence in Tremseh on Thursday was a military operation against armed opponents of the government.

"What happened was not an attack on civilians," Makdissi told reporters in Damascus, saying that the use of heavy weapons against such a small area would have been impossible. "What has been said about the use of heavy weapons is baseless."

He announced a death toll of 39, of whom he said two were civilians. Activists initially said the death toll was more than 200, but revised it downward to a list of 103 victims, overwhelmingly young male adults.

Makdissi said the rapid international condemnation of the attack was premature. The first reports described it as a massacre of civilians, but the incomplete portrait that has emerged since has indicated that it was a lopsided military confrontation in which scores of rebel fighters were slaughtered.

Gen. Robert Mood, leader of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, said Friday that monitors stationed near Tremseh saw the army using heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.

The declaration by the Red Cross that the Syrian conflict constituted civil war confirmed what many observers have said.

The ruling could affect what use of force was legally justifiable under international law, The Associated Press reported.

Calling the conflict a civil war means that international humanitarian law applies, and it grants all parties in a conflict the right to use appropriate force to achieve their aims. The Red Cross assessment could also form the basis for future war crimes prosecutions and increase the legal consequences of any abuses.

New York Times