RUSSIAN FM SPOX COMMENTS ON REPORTED MASSACRE IN SYRIA

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(7 Jun 2012) Russia has condemned the reported mass killing of 78 people in Syria and said the response should be a consorted effort by the international community to support the Syrian UN observer mission and implement the peace plan of international envoy Kofi Annan. • Alexander Lukashevich, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Moscow condemns such barbarian acts of violence and that those who orchestrated the deaths should be brought to trial and bear the harshest punishment. • Syria's main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council, claimed that at least 78 people were killed in the village of Mazraat al-Qubair in central Hama province when government-aligned militiamen converged on the village from neighbouring pro-regime villages. • Some of the dead were killed execution-style, others were slain with knives, the SNC said. • It said 35 of the dead were from the same family and more than half of them were women and children. • The exact death toll and circumstances of the killings overnight in Mazraat al-Qubair were impossible to confirm. • The United Nations mission in Syria (UNSMIS) said on Thursday that government troops had blocked their observers from reaching the site of the killings. • Syria denied the opposition claims as absolutely baseless . • The reports came just weeks after more than 100 people were killed in one day in a cluster of villages known as Houla in central Homs province, many of them children and women gunned down in their homes. • The violence is bound to reinforce the growing belief that a peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan is unravelling as the country spirals toward civil war. • There is no doubt that it is not the first time when certain forces resort to savage and abominable provocations with the purpose disrupting the implementation the Annan plan, Lukashevich told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. • He said Moscow remains confident that in the present rather complicated situation the response to this provocation should be the consolidation of efforts of the international community in support of the mission of the UN special envoy and the Arab League, and a full and precise implementation by the Syrian government of and the opposition of all points of the plan of Kofi Annan. • He also attempted to quell rumours that an alternative plan of action is being considered. • I have not heard about any attempts to set up some other plan, he said. • Our idea in support of the plan which has been suggested by Russia is aimed in the convocation of the meeting of major countries which could work out a mechanism of strengthening of the international co-operation in support of Kofi Annan. • • • Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork • Twitter: / ap_archive • Facebook: / aparchives • Instagram: / apnews • • • You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...

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