Hundreds of families are fleeing a Syrian coastal area
where activists say government troops have massacred nearly 200, many of
whom were women and children.
The opponents of Bashar al Assad's regime say that fighters loyal to
the President carried out two massacres in a Sunni Muslim area driving
by a policy of ethnic cleansing.Activists posted a video online of the bodies of 10 people it said were killed in Ras al Nabaa, in the city of Banias, in an attack overnight.
Half of them were children.
Activists said that the number of dead could be as high as 60.
It comes just two days after pro-Assad militias killed as many as 100 Sunnis were killed in the nearby village of Bayda.
The amateur video showed a man and at least three children dead inside a room.
A baby had burned legs and a body stained with blood. Next to him was a young girl whose face had been deformed after apparently being hit with sharp metal.
Other footage from activists showed entire families killed in their beds, a dead mother cradling her child in her arms, two toddlers lying next to them.
The videos have not been independently verified.
