45 Women, Children Killed in Homs Massacre, Syrian Opposition Says
At least 45 women and children were stabbed and burned in the Syrian city of Homs late Sunday, opposition activists said, after peace talks between a U.N. special envoy and the Syrian regime failed to yield a cease-fire.
The slaughter in Homs took place in the Karm al Zaytoun neighborhood, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists.
Hadi Abdallah, a spokesman for the opposition Syrian Revolution General Council, said the attacks occurred after “Syrian forces and thugs” stormed their homes.
Life and death under Syria’s military onslaught
The LCC called the killings a “massacre orchestrated by the regime” of President Bashar al-Assad. The deaths represented just a fraction of the 108 people killed across the country on Sunday, activists said.
A livestream from a neighboring town purportedly showed some of the bodies from the massacre.
But Syrian state TV said the bodies shown were killed by “armed terrorist groups” — a term the government consistently uses to place blame for violence.
The latest reports of carnage came hours after Kofi Annan, the U.N. special envoy to Syria, left the country following two days of talks with al-Assad.