Syrian rebels seize village in central Syria

Syrian rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces seized control of an village in the central province of Hama on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the rebels killed 25 people in the village of Maan, mainly from a pro-Assad National Defence Force militia.

Residents of Maan, around 5 miles (8 km) east of Syria’s main north-south highway, are from the same Alawite minority as the Assad family which has ruled Syria for the last four decades.

“This massacre isn’t the first,” Social Affairs Minister Kind al-Shamat told Syrian television, saying similar attacks had taken place during the nearly three-year conflict and been ignored by the outside world.

“We feel the insistence of the international community, including those attending Geneva, to divert attention to areas which are not suffering to the same extent as these regions.”

“Unfortunately we don’t hear condemnation from any international organisation of these massacres taking place in these villages,” she said.

More than 130,000 people, including civilians, rebel fighters and Assad’s forces, have been killed in nearly three years of conflict.

The first face-to-face peace talks between government and opposition delegates in Geneva have failed to stem the bloodshed, with Saturday’s death toll exceeding 300, according to figures compiled by the Britain-based Observatory.

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