"[6] The Ba’athist Syrian government alleged that Al-Qaeda terrorist groups were responsible for the killings, and that Houla residents were warned not to speak publicly by opposition forces.

[6] Channel 4 News reported that Houla residents stated that the Ba’athist Syrian military and government-hired Shabiha were the perpetrators of the massacre, as claimed by opposition groups.

[18] The resolution, which blamed Ba’athist Syrian government troops and pro-government militias,[19] instructed an expert panel to conduct an "international, transparent, independent and prompt investigation".

"[21] According to Al Jazeera's correspondent Hadi al-Abdallah, this FSA control of Houla is why the Syrian Army was unable to enter on May 25, and had to shell it from a distance prior to the massacre.

Shortly after, they say, armed rebels attacked the checkpoint, destroying an armored personnel carrier, and the Syrian military responded by bombarding the town with tank and artillery fire.

(p. 66) Considering this, the commission found in their August report "a reasonable basis to believe that the perpetrators of the deliberate killing of civilians, at both the Abdulrazzak and Al-Sayed family locations, were aligned to the Government."

[4] The Local Coordination Committees, a network of opposition activists inside Syria, stated that the attack by the military was preceded by mortar shelling of the town, which in itself left entire families dead.

[13][31] In interviews with Channel 4 News, townspeople described how Shabiha from Alawite villages to the south and west of Houla (Kabu and Felleh were named repeatedly) entered the town after shelling for several hours.

[32] Video later emerged on the Internet showing the bloodstained bodies of many children huddled on a floor in the dark,[33] some with their skulls split open,[34] some with their throats cut, and others knifed or shot to death.

[37] The U.S. State Department later published satellite photos said to show mass graves in Syria that line up with images from the ground supplied by Syrian opposition forces.

[7] Rainer Hermann, the Middle East correspondent of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has published an account of the events according to which elements opposed to the Syrian government, rather than government (or pro-government) ones, were responsible for the massacre [9][10] Citing anonymous opposition sources from the area, Hermann concludes that three Syrian army checkpoints near Taldou were attacked on the evening of May 25 by more than 700 rebel gunman from Rastan, Kafr Laha and Akraba, under the leadership of Abdurazzaq Tlass and Yahya Yusuf.

"[10] The Berliner Morgenpost also carried an article questioning the narrative of Syrian government responsibility, quoting anonymous eyewitness saying that the massacre victims were opponents of the revolution, and that any testimony to the contrary would result in retribution from rebels.

[40] The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's account received attention in the international press,[41][42][43][44][45][46] but is not supported by eyewitness testimony from other sources, including Channel 4 and the BBC,[47][48][49] and was originally rejected by a report in Der Spiegel based upon interviews with Houla residents.

[6][51] In a speech in September 2012, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay didn't directly accuse Syria of responsibility, but noted that government forces played a role in the Houla massacre.

[52] On the day of the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the Syrian government's "unacceptable levels of violence and abuses", including use of heavy weapons on civilian populations, before the U.N. Security Council.

[36] The U.N. report on the killings in the days following the massacre strongly implied that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were responsible for the slaughter, demanding "that the Syrian Government immediately cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers.

[55] On May 27, 2012, France, Germany, Great Britain and the U.S. proposed a collective statement at the U.N. condemning the Syrian government in "blistering" language, accusing it of using tank shells and artillery on a civilian population.

[56] Later in the day, the fifteen nations that comprise U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned the Assad government for its role in the attack, though the language avoided direct blame for the deaths.

[56] On the same day, opposition activists claimed that the Syrian government renewed shelling of Houla, and set up snipers in the area in an apparent attempt to prevent any more civilians from speaking with observers.

[31] On May 29, 2012, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. announced that they were expelling Syrian diplomats in response to the massacre.

Russia called the expulsions of Syrian diplomats "counterproductive" and insisted that a U.N. Security Council statement Sunday condemning the incident was "a strong enough signal to the Syria parties.

[64] The Arab League held a special meeting on Syria following the attack, and on June 2, called on the U.N. Security Council "to take the necessary measures to protect Syrian civilians, including increasing the number of international monitors".