Council meets as Syria witnesses ‘bloodiest day’

DAMASCUS / UNITED NATIONS

A Palestinian child holds a candle to show solidarity with Syrians in Gaza. AFP photo

More than 305 people were killed across Syria on Sept. 26, making it the bloodiest single day of the 18-month revolt, on the same day the U.S. and Russia offered starkly differing assessments of the situation at the U.N. Security Council session.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 199 of the dead were civilians. “This is the highest toll in a single day since March 2011. And this is only counting those whose names have been documented. If we count the unidentified bodies, the figure will be much higher,” observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France-Presse. The previous highest death toll of the uprising was on July 19, when 302 people were killed. On the same day, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appealed for the “paralyzed” U.N. Security Council to make a new attempt to reach an accord to end the Syria conflict. “The atrocities mount while the Council remains paralyzed, and I would urge that we try once again to find a path forward” so that the council can try to end the violence in Syria, Clinton said.

Syria’s staunch ally Russia blamed the ongoing violence in Syria on “some states,” which encourage Syrian rebels and their refusal to negotiate. “The states that encourage the opponents of Syrian president to give up on the cease-fire and dialogue and to demand that the regime capitulate bear responsibility for the continuing bloodshed,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.