Syrian Violence And Now Financial Pressures
The international sanctions and 15 months of political unrest in the country have wiped out Syria’s revenues and have left the country with tremendous inflationary pressures. Reuters

UN monitors found scattered bloodied body parts on Friday in the village of al-Qubeir after the recent massacre.

Nearly 80 people, a majority of them women and children, were reportedly killed in the massacre that took place on Wednesday.

"We found the village empty of its local inhabitants, bmp [tank] tracks on the road, a house damaged from shelling, with a wide range of calibre types and grenades," said Sausan Ghosheh, spokesperson for the UN Supervision in Syria.

The UN observers were obstructed from reaching the village earlier and they were able to reach the place only by Friday afternoon. Al-Qubeir is a village near Hama province where the bloodshed took place.

The village has a population of about 150 most of whom were allegedly killed in the attack; just a handful managed to escape the carnage and flee to nearby areas.

The BBC reported that one of the houses in al-Qubeir seemed to have been hit by tank rounds as well as weapons of other calibre. It added: "Burnt flesh inside and...a stench of burnt flesh" were found by the monitors.

"You could smell dead bodies and you could also see body parts in and around the village," Reuters quoted Ghosheh as saying. Many of the bodies are reported to have been removed while some of them were buried in a nearby village of Maarzaf.

The observers were either sent back by the Syrian Army checkpoints or even halted by some of the civilians in the region. They have even come under fire at some places.

The exact death toll is yet to be determined as there were no witnesses to the massacre. Also, the circumstances of the massacre are still unclear, according to the observers.

Although President Assad's regime has denied the accusations, activists have been pointing their fingers at the governments for the killings.

The massacre at Qubeir has drawn severe condemnation from across over the world. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and international special envoy Kofi Annan held a special meeting to address the current crisis. Both have voiced strong criticism of the Syrian regime.

Syria