Updated below
Today:
Massacre Reported in Syria as Security Council Meets
Syrian opposition activists said more than 200 people were killed in a Sunni village on Thursday by government forces using tanks and helicopters, which, if confirmed, would be the worst in a series of massacres that have convulsed Syria’s increasingly sectarian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
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Initial reports of an atrocity in Tremseh came as Security Council diplomats were meeting in a closed session at the United Nations to work on drafting a new resolution to force Mr. Assad’s government and its armed antagonists to honor a cease-fire, allow the monitors to resume their work, and carry out a peace plan by the special envoy Kofi Annan.
A UN meeting and a "massacre"? Haven't we seen that before?
January 27, 2012
Violence surges in Syria as U.N. Security Council meets
BEIRUT — Violence surged in Syria on Friday, with government forces using heavy artillery to bombard several towns, while the United Nations debated a resolution on ways to end the bloodshed, intensifying the diplomatic pressure on Damascus.
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“In some areas, the shelling has not stopped for three days in a row,” said an activist in the central city of Homs who uses the name Hadi al-Homsi. “The regime is now waging full-scale war against the people.” He described what he called a “massacre” in the district of Karm al-Zeitoun, a focal point of government military operations in the city.
February 3, 2012
U.N. Security Council to meet on Syria as deaths mount
More than 200 people were reported killed in Syria, hours before the U.N. Security Council was scheduled to meet and likely vote on a draft resolution intended to pressure the government there to end its months-long crackdown on demonstrators, diplomats said.
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The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said early Saturday that 217 people, including women and children, had been killed in Homs in what the group characterized as a "massacre."
June 1, 2012
12 Syria workers 'executed' on eve of UN watchdog meet
Syrian government forces summarily executed 12 civilians on their way home from work in a fertiliser factory in Qusayr, activists in the central town told AFP by telephone on Friday.
The reported killings late on Thursday afternoon came on the eve of a special session of the UN Human Rights Council called to discuss the conflict.
June 6, 2012
Syria accused of new massacre as U.N. meets
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad stood accused by opponents on Thursday of a new massacre of scores of villagers hours before a divided U.N. Security Council convenes to review the crisis.
If confirmed, the killings of at least 78 people at Mazraat al-Qabeer, near Hama, will pile on pressure for world powers to act, but there is little sign they can overcome a paralysis born of sharp divisions between Western and Arab states on the one hand and Assad's defenders in Russia, China and Iran.
There was and is clearly a pattern recognizable here. Before any big UN event on Syria the opposition sets out to balme the government of committing a "massacre".
The Syrian government denies to have perpetrated the current "massacre" as it did in the other cases. It asserts that there was a big fight in Tremseh with "many" terrorists killed.
Tens of terrorists overrun the village of al-Trimsa in Hama Countryside yesterday, killing or wounding tens of Syrian civilians.
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The competent security units, in response to al-Trimsa inhabitants' pleads, clashed with the terrorists, inflicting huge losses upon them, capturing scores of them, confiscating their weapons, among which Israeli-made machineguns.3 security personnel were martyred during the clashes, according to SANA reporter in Hama.
A first graphic video of the aftermath of the "massacre" uploaded by the opposition shows 14 dead man of fighting age with seemingly typical battle wounds.
The Syrian government certainly has no advantage by committing any mass atrocity before important UN meetings while the insurgency and its western sponsors are clearly using them for their propaganda purpose.
But this UN meeting "massacre" scheme is getting stall as even some journalists finally recognize this scam for what it is.
Liz Sly, the Washington Post Foreign Correspondent on Syria, remarked today:
The pattern of massacres on the eve of UNSC meetings on Syria is starting to look very real. Reports of 200 dead near Hama; UN meets tmrw.
And Paul Danahar, the BBC Middle East Bureau Chief tweeted:
'Massacre in #Syria as UN meets' is headline everywhere….again. This is either an increasingly odd coincidence or it isn't one at all
That was, I believe, a rather rhetorical question.
The Wall Street Journal has some anonymous "U.S. officials" claiming that Syria is moving nerve gas it is alleged to have out of storage. Is such an unverifiable claim a preparation for another "massacre"? One perpetrated with whoever's nerve gas?
Update
AFP now reports:
Separately, two Syrian activists said most of those killed in the Thursday incident were rebels, and that they died in fighting.
"At this stage, though we do not yet have the final count, the number of civilians killed by shelling is not more than seven," said Jaafar, an activist at the anti-regime Sham News Network.
"The rest were members of the [rebel] Free Syrian Army," he told AFP.
"An army convoy was on its way to the region of Hama when it was attacked by the FSA," he said. "The army staged a counter-attack with the support of [pro-regime] reinforcements from [nearby] Alawite villages. The FSA resisted for an hour before it was defeated."
An activist at a media center in Hama also said "a large number of rebels were killed in fighting between the FSA and the regular army."
The heavily armed insurgents lost a battle. How this is supposed to be a "massacre" is beyond me.