“Within moments of arriving, we were beckoned out by some soldiers. We thought we were under arrest. It was a confused picture. Then a firefight ensued. So, we took cover in a building, and I discovered that close to where we had taken cover, there was a blanket on the ground.
I pulled the blanket off. And it revealed a man way past fighting age, I would say at least 75, 80 years old, who had been shot in the head, gunshot wound to the head, which — I’m not a pathologist, but it looked like the reason of death for him.
I reached for a blanket, giving him whatever dignity I could in that situation, and went into the next room essentially to escape the gunfire. And there, there was the body of — another blanket was laid out on the floor. Under that, I found the body of a little girl probably 5 or 6 years old, no more than that. And she had a gunshot wound in her chest.
This is only a small part of what has happened in Houla. And these bodies will not yet have been discovered by the United Nations.”
- Alex Thomson of Independent Television News on his convoy into the southern area of Houla, Syria, where a weekend massacre killed at least 108
"If you look at the evolution of a revolution that started more than a year ago — what was really a war of ideas against a brutal and what many consider a corrupt, entrenched regime is now moving towards a full-scale insurgency. It’s kind of sad."
— Borzou Daragahi of the Financial Times on the latest in Syria
