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BEIRUT (AFP) – A Syria pro-regime militia killed 13 members of the same family, including six children, in the Mediterranean coastal village of Bayda, a watchdog charged on Sunday.
"The number of people from one family who were killed by regime forces in the village of Bayda... has risen to 13," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The killings came to light one day after they occurred, while fierce clashes pitting rebels against troops raged in Banias nearby.
"The three men, unarmed, were shot dead outside their home. The militiamen then broke in, and killed the women and the children," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
He did not know how the women and children were killed by what he said were members of the pro-regime National Defence Force.
"We have conflicting reports. Some say they were shot dead, others that they were burnt alive," he added.
Abdel Rahman attributed the violence to a revenge attack motivated by sectarian hatred.
"The Banias area is home to a mixture of Sunnis and Alawites. On Saturday, four Alawite members of the National Defence Force were killed in fighting there," he told AFP.
"The pro-regime militiamen took revenge for their deaths by killing this family," he added.
On May 2 and 3, some 300 people were massacred in Banias and Bayda, according to a toll compiled by the Observatory.
While Banias was one of the first towns to see demonstrations calling for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, its location in Tartus province -- an Alawite bastion -- has prompted particularly fierce crackdowns there.
Read more: Syria pro-regime militia 'kills 13 family members' | Fox News
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(Reuters) - Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 13 members of a family in the Sunni Muslim village of Baida on Sunday, in what activists said was the second massacre there.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four women and six children were among those killed in the village, which is in a coastal area of central Syria.
"A relative came to look for them today and found the men shot outside. The women and children's bodies were inside a room of the house and residents in the area said some of the bodies were burned," said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory.
In May, pro-Assad militias killed more than 50 residents of Baida and over 60 locals in the nearby town of Banias. In those killings, some bodies, many of them children, were found burned and mutilated.
Baida is part of a small pocket of Sunni Muslims in the Mediterranean province of Tartous, a stronghold for Assad's own minority Alawite sect.
The two-year-old uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has been led by Syria's Sunni majority. Sectarian clashes and alleged massacres have become increasingly common in a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people.
The killings in Baida came a day after a rare eruption of clashes was reported in the area between Assad's forces and the rebels in the coastal enclave.
The British-based Observatory, which has a network of activists across Syria, said all the victims had been executed.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/21/us-syria-crisis-massacre-idUSBRE96K06220130721
