When tanks crush children, Syrians must ask: who are we?

Since March 15 last year, hundreds of children have been killed, maimed, detained and tortured alongside tens of thousands of Syrian adults. However, in recent months, Syrian children have faced a more extreme and specialised brutality: close-range and systematic murder in serial massacres across the country.

Last March, in the Homs neighbourhood of Karm Al Zeitoun, two dozen children were viciously stabbed to death along with their mothers by regime-controlled shabbiha from neighbouring areas. On May 25, 49 children were killed in the village of Tal Daw in the Houla region of Homs province. Many of them were slaughtered with knives and butchered with axes. On June 7, in the tiny village of Qubair in Hama province, dozens of children were slaughtered alongside the majority of the village's residents. Most of the bodies were stolen and the homes were torched, but the bloody traces and eerie silence lingered.

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The massacres also left a physical vacuum in neighbourhoods and villages. Surviving families, terrified for their children, left their homes and land behind and chose to live as refugees in safer areas. These territorial gains serve the regime, carving sections of Syria into havens exclusive to Assad regime supporters. As one activist from Hama said: "They are pushing us east of the Orontes River."

Such loaded claims seem outlandish until you map out the massacres and realise you can pinpoint the locations of future massacres in specific areas of Homs, Hama and Latakia. Another activist said: "We are 20 massacres away from an opposition-free Syrian coast."

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/when-tanks-crush-children-syrians-must-ask-who-are-we