Syrian government forces have been accused of carrying out a massacre at a hospital during sectarian clashes which erupted just over a week ago. The BBC has visited Suweida’s National Hospital, where staff claim patients were killed inside wards.
The stench hit me before anything else. In the car park of the main hospital in Suweida city, dozens of decomposing corpses are lined up in white plastic body bags. Some are open to the elements, revealing bloated and mutilated remains of those who were killed here.
“It was a massacre,” Dr Wissam Massoud, a neurosurgeon at the hospital, tells me. “The soldiers came here saying they wanted to bring peace, but they killed scores of patients, from the very young to the very old.”
Everyone here, doctors, nurses, volunteers say the same thing. That last Wednesday evening, it was Syrian government troops targeting the Druze religious community who came to the hospital and carried out the killings.
Kiness Abu Motab, a volunteer at the hospital, said of the victims: “What is their crime? Just for being a minority in a democratic country?” “They are criminals. They are monsters. We don’t trust them at all,” Osama Malak an English teacher in the city told me outside the hospital gates.
“They shot an eight-year-old disabled boy in the head,” he said. “According to international law, hospitals should be protected. But they attacked us even in the hospitals. They entered the hospital. They started shooting everybody. They shot the patients in their beds as they slept.”
All sides in this conflict have been accusing each other of committing atrocities. Both Bedouin and Druze fighters as well as the Syrian army have been accused of killing civilians and extra judicial killings.
There is not yet a clear picture of what happened at the hospital. Some here estimate the number of people to be killed last Wednesday at more than 300 but that figure cannot be verified. On Tuesday night the Syrian defence ministry said in a statement that it was aware of reports of “shocking violations” by people wearing military fatigues in the country’s predominantly Druze city of Suweida.
Earlier this week, Raed Saleh, the Syrian Minister for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, told me that any allegations of atrocities committed by all sides would be fully investigated. Access to Suweida city has been heavily restricted, meaning gathering first hand evidence has been difficult.
The city is in effect under siege, with Syrian government forces restricting who is allowed in and out. To get in, we had to pass through numerous checkpoints. As we entered the city, we passed burned out shops and buildings, and cars that had been crushed by tanks.
Suweida city had clearly seen a serious battle between Druze and Bedouin fighters. It was at that point that the Syrian government first intervened to try and enforce a ceasefire. Although numerous Druze villages in Suweida province have been recaptured by government forces, the city, home to more than 70,000 people, remains under full Druze control.
Before we left the hospital, we found eight-year-old Hala al-Khatib sitting on a bench with her aunt. Hala’s face is bloodied and bandaged. She appears to have lost an eye. She tells us that gunmen came and shot her in the head at she was hiding in a cupboard in her home. Hala doesn’t know it yet, but both her parents are dead.
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