[An Nahar] At least 143 people were killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, among them 100 civilians and 43 government troops, activists and a rights group said."This has been one of the bloodiest days in Syria since the anti-regime revolt broke out in March last year," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces killed 100 people across the country, among them more than 10 children.
Thirty-two people were killed in Homs, 24 in Daraa, 24 in the Damascus
...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat...
suburbs of Douma, Daraya and Sirghaya, seven in Idlib, four in Hama, three in Deir Ezzor, three in Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
, one in Latakia and one in the capital Damascus, the LCC said.
The Observatory told Agence La Belle France Presse that at least 13 non-combatants were killed in the central city of Homs and another two unidentified people died in nearby Qusayr.
Streaming video from Homs on the bambuser.com website showed smoke billowing from a residential district amid automatic gunfire and mortar blasts.
The bombardment aborted two attempts by the International Committee of the Red Thingy and the Syrian Red Islamic Thingy to evacuate trapped civilians, but the agencies vowed to try again on Friday.
"Unfortunately, a second attempt, which we carried out in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Thingy, has failed," the Red Islamic Thingy's Khaled Erksoussi said.