Yet another massacre

摘要

"We are at zero-still alive, but that's W it." So says Adnan, a barber in Syria's capital, Damascus, rueing the fact that he is too poor to get his family across the border to nearby Lebanon. His expectation is that things can only get worse. Short of a dramatic change in Western policy on arming the rebels, it is hard to disagree. The fighting is growing even more vicious. Opposition sources reckon that a weeklong government offensive in the suburbs south-west of Damascus in mid-April may have left 250 dead, nearly all civilians. Israeli, French and British intelligence sources say that President Bashar Assad's forces have resorted to the tactical use of chemical weapons (see box). Rape and kidnapping are routine. So is the pillage of historical monuments. On April 24th the nth-century minaret of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo, Syria's battered second city, collapsed after being struck by government tank fire. Two days earlier, two bishops were kidnapped by unknown assailants near Aleppo.