As our correspondent Gwynne Dyer explains in today's main article above, there are no easy options for the international community as it contemplates what to do about Syria.
But whatever your position regarding the merits or otherwise of military intervention in Syria, the impassioned words of Khaled Erksoussi, who is the head of operations for the Syrian Red Crescent, speaking on BBC radio on Thursday, remind us whose interests should be uppermost in our minds today. Mr Erksoussi said: "You see all those pictures and you see all the suffering in those areas, then you hear people talking about decisions in the Security Council and investigation committees, and you scratch your head: did they see the same picture I saw? Because what I saw in those pictures is people need help."
Last week, the Western Daily Press published one of those pictures to which Mr Erksoussi refers. It was not an easy decision to make, to show those deathly ranks of young lifeless bodies, and some readers contacted us to tell us that in their view it was not an image for general public consumption.
We reflected long and hard on whether we had made an error of judgement but have concluded that it was surely better to do our small bit in alerting readers to the atrocities being meted out in that troubled country.
When we see how so many governments the world over have agonised about what to do – and have subsequently done nothing – in response to these shocking events, we are convinced that brave journalists working in the line of fire in Syria were right to take those photographs and we were right to publish them. It is often gratuitous to run with pictures of the dead, all the more so when the dead are children, and it is a decision that must never be taken lightly. It's wrong to capitalise on our disgust without good reason. But if there was ever a story on which it was justified, this is the one.
We argue that it should surely not be controversial to say that the needs and interests of innocent civilians should in extreme cases such as this take precedence over the principle of non-interference in the sovereignty of states even when they are illegitimate and criminal.