A video footage released by different Arab and western media showed that terrorists, and not the Syrian army, launched an attack and killed over a hundred civilians in Houla area in Central Syria on Friday.

The amateur-looking footage which was sent to the western embassies in Damascus to be distributed among people and Arab media concurrent with its broadcast by numerous anti-Assad media in the western and Arab countries was taken off air and websites as soon as its gaffes came to be noticed by media and military analysts.

The footage shows a number of armed men, some of them in Jalbab (local clothes) carrying RPGs. It shows one of the armed men firing an RPG rocket and then standing next to a wall very calmly. The undamaged and actually intact wall seen in the footage reveals that Houla has never been cannonaded by the Syrian Army as alleged in the western media reports in the last two days.


The unworried behavior and calmness of the RPG man who is not shot back by anyone in the footage also astonishes the viewers who have heard in the last two days that the Syrian army has been shelling and attacking people in Houla. Certainly, were that the case, the terrorist could never stand in the area so calmly.

Despite the biased reports of the western media and the anti-Assad Arab media outlets which always rush to blame the Syrian government after any incident in the Muslim Arab country, witness accounts and official reports by Damascus both said that the attack had been waged by armed rebels and terrorists on military positions and pro-Assad civilians in Houla.

The army then rushed to fight back to defend the civilians who were all from a pro-Assad tribe, eye-witnesses told FNA reporter in Houla, adding that the terrorists killed over 100 civilians and several Syrian army soldiers.

While investigations into massacres and terrorist bombings prove opponents of Bashar al-Assad government are to be blamed for these crimes, the western media outlets always rush to accuse Damascus for all crimes in Syria without presenting substantiating evidence. In few cases when they release a supportive image or footage, it always later comes to be known that the evidence has been fake and distorted.

This has caused deep suspicion among not just political observers and analysts, but also the people, specially those in the Middle-East.

Middle-East analyst and Tehran University Professor Mohammad Marandi says the West and the Saudis are responsible for continued crimes and killings in Syria.

"Every time there is a terrorist attack in Syria, a suicide bombing or any other atrocity the western media and western governments immediately put the blame on the Syrian government, thus encouraging western and Saudi-backed terrorists to carry out such attacks because they will not be held accountable," Marandi told FNA on Tuesday.

"Therefore, in addition to the fact that they support terrorist organizations at all levels, they have additional blood on their hands for blindly attributing all violence to President Bashar al-Assad government, thus white-washing the crimes or terrorist organizations," he added.

Another similar case of forgery turned into a scandal for the British Broadcasting Corporation after the BBC used a photo taken from Iraq in 2003, showing the corpses of Shiite Iraqi children killed during the Saddam era, atop a report on the Friday events in the Syrian city of Houla.
Image
The photograph was actually taken by Marco di Lauro in Iraq in 2003. Note the attribution in the bottom right corner of the photo - 'PHOTO FROM ACTIVIST'

Marco Di Lauro, an Italian photographer who took the shocking photo announced that he was shocked to see the photo on BBC website atop a report from the recent massacre in Syria.

"Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti Syrian propaganda on the BBC website front page," Di Lauro said.

"Today Sunday May 27 at 0700 am London time the attached image which I took in Al Mussayyib in Iraq on March 27, 2003 was front page on BBC website illustrating the massacre that happen in Houla the Syrian town and the caption and the web site was stating that the image was showing the bodies of all the people that have been killed in the massacre and that the image was received by the BBC by an unknown activist. Somebody is using my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to prove the massacre," he added.

The picture taken from Iraq shows an Iraqi child jumping over a line of hundreds of bodies, in a school where they have been transported from a mass grave, to be identified. They were discovered in the desert in the outskirts of Al Musayyib, 40 km south of Baghdad. It has been estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Iraqis had been reported missing in the region south of Baghdad. People have been searching for days for identity cards or other clues among the skeletons to try to find the remains of brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and even children who disappeared when Saddam's government crushed a Shiite uprising following the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Marco di Lauro had published the image on his website as part of his story "Iraq, the Aftermath of Saddam".

He is a photographer for Getty Images picture agency and his works have been published across the US and Europe. However, di Lauro thinks that the BBC got his image from the Internet and not from official stock, which worries him.

He told the Daily Telegraph, "What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That's all."

The picture misused by the BBC to impair the Syrian government's face was aimed at showing the Friday's assault on the central area of Houla which was one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's 15-month-old unrests, and gruesome images of dozens of children killed in the attacks prompted a wave of international outrage.

The UN said 32 children under the age of 10 were among the dead.

The BBC and the western media outlets have sought hard to project the blame for all killings, massacres and bombing on the Damascus government, while Syrian government officials deny the crime, saying foreign-backed terrorists are in charge of these crimes.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria.

The US daily, Washington Post, reported that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad's government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

According to the report, material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.

Opposition activists who two months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said earlier this month that the flow of weapons - most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past - has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.