A terrible massacre has been committed against the people of Hatla village in Deir Ezzor by the terrorists who use religion as a cover adding a new black chapter to their criminal record.
A few hours after killing a 15 year old boy [Muhammed al-Qatta], Jabhat al-Nusra perpetrated a new massacre in Hatla village in Deir Ezzor Governorate. They compelled the inhabitants to leave and killed those who remained and burned their houses.
Up to sixty Shia Muslims have been killed in an attack by opposition fighters in the eastern Syrian town of Hatla. A video posted online on Tuesday, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla”, showed fighters waving the black Salafi flag and celebrating.
“We have raised the banner ‘There is no God but God’ above the houses of the apostate rejectionists, the Shia,” the voice of the cameraman says.
Activists denied that the killings were sectarian in nature, claiming instead that they were a response to an attack on a Free Syrian Army checkpoint by 30 armed villagers from Hatla. The activists claim the opposition fighters were incited by the Assad regime’s decision to arm the population of Hatla, one of the only Shia villages in an area that has been firmly under rebel control for more than a year.
However, the language used in the videos is explicitly sectarian. “This is the Shia, this is the Shia carcass, this is their end,” the cameraman says as a blanket is lifted from one of the victims. That video, posted by a pro-Assad group, indicates those responsible were non-Syrians, possibly from Kuwait.
A Syrian government official spoke of a “massacre against villagers in which older people and children were killed”. (Source)