Despite truce, scores killed in Syrian town

By msnbc.com staff and news services

BEIRUT -- At least 88 people were killed in shelling on the Syrian town of Houla on Friday, an opposition group said on Saturday.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said residents continued to flee the town, in central Homs province, in fear that artillery fire would resume.

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There was no immediate independent confirmation of the accounts from Syria, which has restricted access for journalists during a 14-month-old revolt against President Bashar Assad.

The Local Coordination Committees (LLC) said at least 88 people had died, "most of them women and children," the BBC reported.

According to Al-Jazeera, the Observatory said at least 25 children were among the dead, and the Syrian National Council estimated the total death toll was at least 110.

A local activist giving his name as Abu Yazan reached via Skype said 12 people died in shelling and 106 were killed when pro-regime thugs known as shabiha stormed the area.?

The death toll could not be verified but if it is confirmed it is?one of the highest for any single event since the popular uprising against Bashar Assad began in March 2011. The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians.?

The U.N. said Saturday a team of observers was heading to the area.?

'Massacred'
Opposition activists said on Friday that Syrian forces opened fire with artillery after skirmishing with insurgents in Houla, a cluster of villages north of the city of Homs.

"Some of the victims were hit by heavy artillery while others, entire families, were massacred," the council's head of foreign relations Bassma Kodmani said in a statement, Al-Jazeera reported.

Footage posted to web sites showed bloodied and mangled corpses, including those of children, described as the victims of the shelling.?The videos could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a letter to the Security Council that the situation was "extremely serious" and asked that member states not arm either side in the conflict, the BBC reported.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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