Massacre of over 100 reported in Syria's Homs

FAMILY OF 17 REPORTED KILLED

Activists said 17 members of the Khazam family had been killed during Tuesday's raid on Basatin al-Hasawiya.

"The Observatory has the names of 14 members of one family, including three children, and information on other families who were completely killed, including one of 32 people," Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory, told Reuters.

"This needs to be investigated by the United Nations," said Abdelrahman, a Syrian who has documented human rights violations in Syria since 2006 and now reports on killings by both sides.

The United Nations says 60,000 have been killed in the 22-month-old conflict. Several massacres have been reported, most blamed on pro-Assad forces but some also on rebel fighters.

The town of Houla in Homs province was the scene in May 2011 of the killings of 108 people, including nine children and 34 women, which UN monitors blamed on the army and pro-Assad militia.

The United Nations sent observers to Syria in April 2011 but after several attacks on their convoys they left in August, complaining both sides had chosen the path of war.

Abu Yazen, an opposition activist in Homs, said the rebel Free Syrian Army occasionally entered the farmland of Basatin al-Hasawiya to attack a nearby military academy.

"Assad's forces punish civilians for allowing the rebels to enter the area," he said. Other activists said the raid was carried out by pro-Assad militia.

The government and opposition blame each other for two explosions at Aleppo's university on Tuesday which killed at least 87 people, many of them students attending exams, in the deadliest attack on civilians to hit the commercial hub since rebels laid siege to it over the summer.

US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack was "beyond horrific".

"According to eyewitnesses, regime jets launched the strikes," she said on her Twitter account.

Russia, which has backed Assad throughout the revolt both in rhetoric and through its veto of UN Security Council resolutions condemning Assad, dismissed suggestions Damascus was behind the explosions.    

"I cannot imagine any bigger blasphemy," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists during a visit to Tajikistan.