Syrian denial in massacre not credible

Washington Post:.

The Syrian government denied on Sunday that its forces were responsible for the deaths of dozens of people, including 32 children, in a village in a central Syria allegedly during a fierce artillery bombardment. 

The official news agency SANA reported that Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi “has categorically denied responsibility of the Syrian forces for the massacre” in the Houla area, a cluster of small villages northwest of the city of Homs. 

Opposition groups claim at least 90 people died in the bombardment of the village Friday night, and the United Nations said in a statement Saturday that its monitors had visited the village and confirmed the killings of “dozens of men, women and children and the wounding of hundreds more.”

...
 Monitors with the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria “have viewed the bodies of the dead and confirmed from an examination of ordnance that artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighbourhood,” the statement said. 

“This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian Government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms,” it added. “Those responsible for perpetrating this crime must be held to account.”
...

Since the opposition does not have heavy artillery or tanks the government's claims look like a cover up of an atrocity by government forces.  By making such claims the government also discredits its other claims trying to pin blame on the opposition.