Syria to Pull Diplomats
15:12 05/06/2012 DAMASCUS, June 5 (RIA Novosti) - Syria has announced on Tuesday that it will withdraw its ambassadors from France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and withdraw its charge d'affaires from Belgium, Bulgaria and Canada, Syrian television channel Suria has reported.
A group of nations, including the so-called 'Group of Friends of Syria" announced the withdrawal of their diplomats from Syria at the end of May, and expelled a number of Syrian diplomats in connection with the alleged involvement of Syrian forces in a massacre in the Houla district on May 25, in which over a hundred civilians were killed.
UN monitors who visited the scene claimed most of those killed had been shot at very close range, whilst others where killed by artillery fire. Almost half of those killed were children.
The UN Security Council at an emergency session on May 27 condemned the killings of innocent civilians.
The Syrian authorities rejected any blame for the massacre, blaming Islamic radical fighters for the killings.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, speaking to his national parliament on the weekend, said: "If we don't feel the pain the pain that squeezes our hearts, as I felt it, for the cruel scenes — especially the children — then we are not human beings," ABC News reported.
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