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Officials from a series of countries, including France, Britain andAustralia, said Tuesday that they were expelling Syrian diplomatsin a bid to increase pressure on leader Bashar Assad in protest torecent civilian killings. The killings Friday in Houla, a collection of farming villages inSyria's Homs province, were one of the deadliest single events inthe 15-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule.The U.N. said 49 children and 34 women were among the 108 peoplekilled. French President Francois Hollande told reporters Tuesday thatAmbassador Lamia Shakkour will be notified "today or tomorrow" thatshe must leave. Hollande said that after high-level discussions with British PrimeMinister David Cameron and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, ithad been decided to deploy "a certain number of ... pressuretactics," against Syria, including the expulsion of the ambassador. Phones at Syria's Embassy in Paris were not being answered Tuesday. British officials said Tuesday that the U.K. is expelling threeSyrian diplomats in protest at the killings, among them Charged'Affaires Ghassan Dalla -- the country's top ranking diplomat inLondon. The officials demanded anonymity because they said theywere not allowed to discuss the action ahead of a planned publicstatement from Foreign Secretary William Hague. Hague confirmed that the United States, Canada, Germany, Spain,France, Italy and Australia were all taking action to expel thediplomats. The ambassador to Germany, Radwan Loutfi, was given 72 hours toleave Germany on Tuesday. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Germany and its allies hope"that this unambiguous message does not fall on deaf ears inDamascus." The Italian Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Khaddour Hassan wascalled to the ministry and informed of his new status -- which wasalso extended to an unspecified number of Syrian functionaries. Spain said it was giving Syrian Ambassador Hussam Edin Aala andfour other diplomats based in Madrid three days to leave thecountry. In Canberra, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Charged'Affaires Jawdat Ali, the most senior Syrian diplomat inAustralia, is to be expelled along with another diplomat from theSyrian Embassy. He said they were told to leave the country within72 hours, in response to the massacre in Houla. "This is the most effective way we've got of sending a message ofrevulsion of what has happened in Syria," Carr said. In a statement, he called the killings a "hideous and brutal crime"and said Australia would not engage with the Syrian governmentunless it abides by a U.N. cease-fire plan. In Vienna, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nikolaus Lutterotti said theSyrian ambassador is being summoned to the ministry where officialswill deliver a very hard protest about the massacre. When asked if the expulsions were EU-wide, Lutterotti said this hadnot yet been decided. He said the ambassador to Austria would notbe expelled as he holds an additional function as therepresentative to the UN organizations in Vienna. The U.N. estimates 9,000 people have been killed since the uprisingbegan in March 2011. The U.N. said Tuesday that entire families were shot in their homesduring a massacre in Syria last week that killed more than 100people, including children. Most of the victims were shot at closerange, the U.N. said. Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner forHuman Rights, said the conclusions were based on accounts gatheredby U.N. monitors and corroborated by other sources. He said U.N.monitors found that fewer than 20 of the 108 people killed in thewest-central area of Houla were killed by artillery fire. "Most of the rest of the victims were summarily executed in twoseparate incidents," Colville told reporters in Geneva. "At thispoint it looks like entire families were shot in their houses." He said witnesses blamed pro-government thugs known as shabiha forthe attacks, noting that they sometimes operate "in concert" withgovernment forces. The killings in a collection of villages called Houla near thecentral Syrian city of Homs last week have drawn fresh attention tothe Syrian conflict, in part because of the brutality of themassacre. Activists posted amateur videos online showing shellsexploding in the village, dismembered bodies lying in the streets,then rows of dozens of dead laid out before being buried in a massgrave. The U.N. has said government forces fired tank shells and artilleryat Houla, but stopped short of blaming them for Friday's killings.Activists said most of the victims were killed by pro-governmentthugs who stormed the area after clashes with local rebels, but theregime categorically denied any involvement. Hollande said Tuesday that Paris will host a meeting in early Julyof the so-called Friends of Syria seeking a diplomatic solution tothe conflict. The ambassador's expulsion came amid increasingdiplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria and put pressureon Syrian President Bashar Assad. he Syrian ambassador to Britain left the country in March. TheUnited States and Britain have closed their embassies in Syria. The Associated Press contributed to this report. I am an expert from li-ion-battery-packs.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Heated Clothing Battery , Medical Device Batteries, Rechargeable Power Tool Batteries,and more.
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