SYRIAN OBSERVATORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (UK), AL ARABIYA (UAE)
Reports emerged Thursday that pro-Assad forces killed more than 100 people earlier this week, including women and children, on farmland on the outskirts of Syria’s central city of Homs.
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad stormed Homs’ impoverished district of Basatin al-Hasawiya on Tuesday, burning, stabbing or shooting at least 106 people. The Observatory asked for an international investigation to be launched.
Homs has been at center of the country’s ongoing civil war; since May 2011, the city has been under siege by the Syrian Army.
Meanwhile, rebels from the Free Syrian Army are reportedly trying to break a months-long deadlock in their battle for Syria’s second city Aleppo, cutting supply routes ahead of simultaneous assaults on regime bases, Al Arabiya reports.
More than 60,000 people have been killed since the uprising broke out. Also on Tuesday, at least 50 people died in a campus blast in Aleppo, Syria’s economic capital.
