11-year-old Syrian boy pretended to be dead to survive massacre

When the gunmen began to slaughter his family, 11-year-old Ali
el-Sayed says he fell to the floor of his home, soaking his clothes
with his brother's blood to fool the killers into thinking he was
already dead.
The Syrian boy tried to stophimself from trembling, even as the
gunmen, with long beards and shaved heads, killed his parents and all
four of his siblings, one by one.
The youngest to die was Ali's brother, 6-year-old Nader. His small
body bore two bullet holes — one in his head, another in his back.
"I put my brother's blood all over me and acted like I was dead," Ali
told The Associated Press over Skype on Wednesday, his raspy voice
steady and matter-of-fact, five days after the killing spree that left
him both an orphan and an only child.
Ali is one of the few survivors of a weekend massacre in Houla, a
collection of poor farming villages and olive groves in Syria's
central Homs province. More than 100 people were killed, many of them
women and children who were shot or stabbed in their houses.
The killings brought immediate, worldwide condemnation of
PresidentBashar Assad, who has unleashed a violent crackdown on an
uprising that began in March 2011. Activists say as many as 13,000
people have been killed since the revolt began.
U.N. investigators and witnesses blame at least some of the Houla
killings on shadowy gunmen known as shabiha who operate on behalf of
Assad's government.
Recruited from the ranks of Assad's Alawite religiouscommunity, the
militiamenenable the government to distance itself from direct
responsibility for the execution-style killings, torture and revenge
attacks that have become hallmarks of the shabiha.
In many ways, the shabiha are more terrifying than the army and
security forces, whose tactics include shelling residential
neighborhoods and firing on protesters. The swaggering gunmen are
deployed specifically to brutalize and intimidate Assad's opponents.
Activists who helped collectthe dead in the aftermath of the Houla
massacre described dismembered bodies in the streets, and row upon row
of corpses shrouded in blankets.
"When we arrived on the scene we started seeing the scale of the
massacre," said Ahmad al-Qassem, a 35-year-old activist. "I saw a kid
with his brains spilling out, another child who was no more than 1
year old who was stabbed in the head. The smell of death was
overpowering."
The regime denies any responsibility for the Houlakillings, blaming
them on terrorists. And even if the shabiha are responsible forthe
killings, there is no clear evidence that the regime directly ordered
themassacre in a country spiraling toward civil war.
As witness accounts begin to leak out, it remains to be seen what,
exactly, prompted the massacre. Although the Syrian uprising has been
among the deadliest of the Arab Spring, the killings in Houlastand out
for their sheer brutality and ruthlessness.
-AP