Head of the inquiry committee tasked with probing the circumstances of the controversial massacre of Syria's central village of Houla said Thursday that preliminary investigations indicated that 800 heavily armed men carried out attacks on government forces and slaughtered families in Houla.
At a press conference on the investigation's initial assessments, Brigadier-General Qasem Jamal Sulaiman said the armed groups attacked several posts of the government troops in a bid to seize control of Houla and push it out of the government control.
He said that the armed groups' attacks targeted two army bases in the area, adding that the government troops responded in self- defense and did not leave their bases or enter Houla.
He said that the targeted families were peaceful ones who neither have participated in any anti-government activities nor took up arms against the government, adding that the armed groups have sought to take revenge of those families for not joining attacks on the government troops and also to spark international sympathy.
Sulaiman stressed that "these are only initial assessment," adding "the initial reports were based on testimonies from eye witnesses."
He claimed that a number of dead bodies shown on TV belonged to the armed men, who were killed in the clashes with the government troops, adding that the images of the gunmen' corpses were aired on tendentious TVs as the images of victims.
For his side, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said that his government had asked the head of the UN supervision mission in Syria to examine the massacre site, adding that the final reports would be submitted to the international community once available.
Makdissi said the investigation is still underway for more details and clues, adding that the investigation is transparent and that there is no need for international inquiry.
He meanwhile said there were schemes from the higher levels in the international community to foment a sectarian rift in the country.
The recent appalling attacks in Houla, a group of villages 25 km northwest of the central city of Homs, had claimed the lives of more than 108 people, including at least 49 children under the age of 10 and 32 women.
The Syrian government and the opposition traded barbs over the bloody attacks that did not even spare the children.
As the Syrian government categorically denied any involvement of its troops in the carnage and accused armed groups of carrying out the killings in order to frame the government before the advent of UN-Arab League joint envoy Kofi Annan to Syria, the opposition activists accused the government forces of shelling the village, adding that pro-government militias have done the bulk of the killings after the army's alleged bombardment.
The recent massacre has provoked once again calls for foreign intervention in the country, a choice most of the world countries have for long shown reluctance to bring up.
Observers believe that last week's killings in Houla are the tipping point that has turned the table against the Syrian government and could be the spark that would call in foreign intervention.
The massacre has drawn worldwide condemnation and other diplomatic measures, mainly the decision by at least 10 world countries to expel Syrian diplomats in yet another indication of mounting pressures on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Wednesday, Syria's media, which reflects the government's thinking, said Syria would not be intimidated by this " unprecedented hysteria," and accused the West of deliberately escalating the situation to enflame a civil war.
Syria categorically denied that its army was behind the massacre and blamed it on "armed terrorist groups," whom it said are hectically working to undermine Annan's six-point plan that calls for a cease-fire to be followed by national dialogue to end the 15-month-long crisis.
It said the armed groups are getting bolder in influencing the world to boost their own goals, mainly in calling in foreign intervention.
French President Francois Holland said that France does not exclude a military intervention in Syria and that this topic is not out of the questions.
However, the White House on Tuesday said again that it did not believe the time was right for military intervention in Syria, and rejected calls by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for more direct steps to end Assad's rule.
"We do not believe that militarization, further militarization of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action. We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
The Houla incident was used by Western effort as a tool in building up pressure on Russia to neutralize its pro-Syria stand.
Some observers believe that pressures have, to some extent, yielded fruits, citing what they called the positive turnabout in Russia's position when Moscow, in an unusual move, condemned the massacre and held both the Syrian government and the opposition accountable.
