Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UN mission head Maj-Gen Mood: "Deaths were an unacceptable attack" Amateur footage contained within this clip purportedly shows a mass burial 
 
 UN observers have counted at least 90 bodies, including 32 children, after a Syrian government attack on a town. 
 
 UN mission head Maj-Gen Robert Mood told the BBC the killing in Houla was "indiscriminate and unforgivable". 
 
 UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he would seek a strong global response to the "appalling crime". UN chief Ban Ki-moon said it was a "flagrant violation of international law". 
 
 Syria's government has blamed the deaths on "armed terrorist gangs". 
 
 This is one of the bloodiest attacks in one area since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. 
 
 Activists say some of the victims died by shelling, while others were summarily executed, or butchered by the regime militia known as the "shabiha". 
 
 UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan, and the Arab League have also condemned Friday's assault. 
 
 France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he was making immediate arrangements for a Paris meeting of the Friends of Syria group, which includes Western and Arab nations, but not Russia or China, who have blocked previous attempts to introduce UN sanctions. 
 
 Fighting in Syria has continued despite the deployment of some 250 UN observers monitoring a ceasefire brokered by Mr Annan - a ceasefire which the BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says is now "pretty fictional". 
 
 The UN says at least 10,000 have been killed since the protests began. 
 
 UN 'refused to come' 
 
 A joint statement from Mr Ban and Mr Annan said firing heavy weapons into a residential neighbourhood was a "flagrant violation of international law" which must stop and those responsible should be held to account. 
 
 Analysis Initial reports from activists of more than 90 civilians killed in a "massacre" at Houla were met with the usual caution. But a visit by the UN monitors confirmed that the reality was as horrendous as the gruesome internet videos portrayed. The observers have been criticised for not preventing the carnage in the first place. But they were at least able to verify what happened, and document the deadly use of government artillery and tank fire, even if they could not explain the circumstances leading to the carnage. That means that if [UN-Arab League envoy] Kofi Annan goes to Damascus next week, as he is expected to do in a bid to salvage his six-point peace plan, his argument that government troops and tanks must withdraw will be strengthened. But with the Free Syrian Army threatening to scrap even notional commitment to the battered ceasefire, events on the ground are clearly outpacing peace efforts. With international action from the Security Council ruled out, the trend towards arming the rebels and fuelling a civil war may gather force. 
 
 Mr Annan would be contacting Syria's government to "convey in the clearest terms the expectations of the international community, and he will also do so during his forthcoming visit to Syria", it said. 
 
 Mr Hague said he would be calling for an urgent session of the UN Security Council in the coming days. 
 
 Arab League head Nabil al-Arabi called the assault a "horrific crime" and urged the Security Council to "stop the escalation of killing and violence by armed gangs and government military forces," the Reuters news agency reports. 
 
 The opposition Free Syrian Army says it can no longer commit to the ceasefire unless the Security Council can ensure that civilians are protected, the AFP news agency reports. 
 
 Horrific video footage has emerged from Houla of dozens of dead children, covered in blood, their arms and legs strewn over one another. It is unverified, but our correspondent says such images would be difficult to fake. 
 
 International media cannot report freely in Syria and it is impossible to verify reports of violence. 
 
 A team of UN observers visited the town on Saturday and afterwards Maj-Gen Mood said they could confirm "the use of small arms, machine gun[s], artillery and tanks." 
 
 But he did not say who was behind the killings. 
 
 Our correspondent says local people are angry that the observers failed to intervene to stop the killing. 
 
 Abu Emad, speaking from Houla, said their appeals to the monitors failed to produce action. 
 
 "We told them at night, we called seven of them. We told them the massacre is being committed right now at Houla by the mercenaries of this regime and they just refused to come and stop the massacre." 
 
 The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said more than 110 people died. The SNC's Ausama Monajed told the BBC the regime was selecting vulnerable towns to "teach the entire country a lesson". 
 
 "It is beyond humanity what we have seen," he said. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UK Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt says the massacre was "an act of pure, naked savagery" 
 
 Activists called a day of mourning on Saturday. 
 
 Earlier, in a letter to the Security Council, Mr Ban said the Syrian opposition controlled "significant parts of some cities". 
 
 He said that "established terrorist groups" could have been behind some of the recent bomb blasts in Syria judging from the sophistication of the attacks. 
 
 He said the situation remained "extremely serious" and urged states not to arm either side in the conflict. 
 
 Earlier this month, a bombing in Damascus left 55 dead in an attack which the government blamed on al-Qaeda. The attack came amid mounting fears that the terrorist group was taking advantage of the conflict to gain a foothold. 
 
 On Thursday, a UN-mandated panel said Syrian security forces were to blame for most abuses in the conflict, which has continued despite the presence of the UN observers. 
 
 Mr Annan's six-point peace agreement ordered a cessation of violence on 12 April. While casualties appeared to fall after the truce, the fighting quickly resumed to previous levels. ||||| Activists on Saturday raised the number of those killed in an alleged massacre by Syrian regime forces in a region in the center of the country to more than 90. 
 
 This image made from amateur video released by Shaam News Network and accessed Friday, May 25, 2012 purports to show a wounded child being evacuated in Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via... (Associated Press) 
 
 This image made from amateur video released by Shaam News Network and accessed Friday, May 25, 2012 purports to show shelling in Jobar, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP video) TV OUT, THE ASSOCIATED... (Associated Press) 
 
 This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit and accessed Friday, May 25, 2012 purports to show Syrian troops in Douma, Syria. (AP Photo/Ugarit via AP video) TV OUT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANNOT... (Associated Press) 
 
 This image made from amateur video released by Shaam News Network and accessed Friday, May 25, 2012 purports to show a wounded child being evacuated in Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via... (Associated Press) 
 
 This image made from amateur video released by Shaam News Network and accessed Friday, May 25, 2012 purports to show police running toward a protest in Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via... (Associated Press) 
 
 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 90 people had been killed in the Houla area in the 24 hours since midday Friday. 
 
 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. 
 
 That death toll 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 new violence in Houla is also a further blow to a U.N. peace plan for Syria that was supposed to start with a cease-fire between government troops and rebels on April 12 but has never really taken hold. 
 
 More than 250 U.N. observers are now deployed in Syria to oversee the truce, and a spokesman for the team said Saturday that observers were heading to Houla. 
 
 A local activist reached via Skype said regime forces started shelling the village of Houla, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the city of Homs in west-central Syria following an anti-regime demonstration following Muslim prayers on Friday. Twelve people were killed in the shelling, said the activist, who gave his name as Abu Yazan. 
 
 Later, pro-regime thugs known as shabiha stormed the village of Taldaw, just south of Houla, raiding homes and shooting at civilians. 
 
 "They killed entire families, from parents on down to children, but they focused on the children," he said. 
 
 Amateur videos posted online showed many children among the dozens of dead laid out in different rooms and covered with sheets and blankets. One video showed 14 dead children lined up on a floor, shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 Abu Yazan said most residents were fleeing the area Saturday, fearing further killings. 
 
 Activist claims and videos could not be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from operating inside the country. 
 
 News of the killings elicited harsh condemnations from anti-regime groups, many of which have expressed frustration with international reluctance to intervene in Syria's conflict. 
 
 Bassma Kodmani of the exile opposition Syrian National Council called on the U.N. Security Council "to examine the situation in Houla and to determine the responsibility of the United Nations in the face of such mass killings, expulsions and forced migration from entire neighborhoods." 
 
 The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released an unusually harsh statement, saying Arab nations and the international community were "partners" in the killing "because of their silence about the massacres that the Syrian regime has committed." ||||| Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, were killed in a central Syrian village, top United Nations officials said Saturday, accusing the government of perpetrating the “indiscriminate” shelling of civilian neighborhoods. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In one of the worst episodes of carnage since the uprising began 15 months ago, Syrian tanks and artillery pounded Houla, a rebel-controlled village near the restive city of Homs, during the day, opposition groups said, then soldiers and pro-government fighters stormed the village and killed families in their homes late at night. 
 
 Amateur videos said to be taken in the aftermath showed row after row of victims, many of them small children with what appeared to be bullet holes in their temples. Other videos showed gruesome shrapnel wounds caused by what activists said was a barrage of shelling that started Friday in response to demonstrations after the weekly prayer service and that continued Saturday. 
 
 United Nations monitors visiting the village on Saturday counted at least 92 bodies and found spent tank shells, which they cited as evidence that the Syrian military had violated its part of a truce in firing heavy artillery at civilians. A United Nations statement said the observers confirmed that “artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 International officials largely blamed the government. 
 
 Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and Kofi Annan, his predecessor and envoy to Syria, issued a scathing condemnation. 
 
 “This appalling and brutal crime involving indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force is a flagrant violation of international law and of the commitments of the Syrian government to cease the use of heavy weapons in population centers and violence in all its forms,” the top United Nations officials said in a statement. They called on Syria to stop using heavy weapons in population centers and for all sides to cease violence. 
 
 The White House said the attack was “a vile testament to an illegitimate regime that responds to peaceful political protest with unspeakable and inhuman brutality.” 
 
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 Gory images posted online — particularly the scene of rows of dead children smeared with blood — prompted an emotional outpouring of antigovernment demonstrations across Syria and calls for sectarian revenge. 
 
 Activists said that much of the slaughter had been carried out by pro-government thugs, or “shabiha,” from the area. Houla is a Sunni Muslim town, while three villages around it are mostly Alawite, the religion of President Bashar al-Assad and whose adherents are the core of his security forces. A fourth village is Shiite Muslim. 
 
 A man in a black knitted mask who appeared on one YouTube video, for example, said it was time “to prepare for vengeance against this awful sectarian regime.” 
 
 The rebel Free Syrian Army, the loose federation of armed militias across the country, issued a statement saying it was no longer committed to the United Nations truce because the plan was merely buying time for the government to kill civilians and destroy cities and villages. 
 
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 “We won’t allow truce after truce, which prolongs the crisis for years,” the statement said. 
 
 The Syrian government blamed “terrorists,” its catchall phrase for the opposition, for killing the civilians. 
 
 State television repeatedly broadcast pictures of members of one household who had been massacred, calling the deaths “part of the ugly crimes that the terrorists are committing against the Syrians with the financial support of some Arab states and others.” 
 
 SANA, the state-run news agency, said that “armed terrorist groups attacked law-enforcement forces and civilians” in the nearby town of Teldo, which prompted security forces to “intervene and engage the terrorists.” 
 
 But the direct accusation from the United Nations, which is monitoring the tattered April 12 cease-fire, rebutted the government’s standard claim that outsiders or their domestic dupes are to blame for the violence. 
 
 Syria sharply limits access to the country for foreign correspondents, making independent verification of events there difficult. But there has been a pattern of similar government assaults in recent months against villages sympathetic to the opposition. 
 
 Activists said that there had been firefights between the armed opposition that controlled the village and the government forces besieging it. Although the United Nations statements called for stopping violence on both sides, neither suggested that the opposition was involved in the deaths of civilians in Houla. 
 
 The massacre also prompted new questions about the continued effectiveness of the truce just as Mr. Annan, the architect of the plan, headed to Damascus. The opposition has criticized the truce, and the United Nations peacekeepers who came with it, as ineffective. There are 271 unarmed military observers on the ground in Syria, nearly the entire contingent of 300 approved by the Security Council, as well as numerous civilian workers. 
 
 The observers produced a quick assessment, the first time they have issued a publicly damning report so soon after an episode of violence. Despite their efforts, as well as the unusual step of the United Nations directly accusing the government of perpetrating major violence, the massacre soured Syrians even more on their presence, since the killing took place despite observers being deployed in nearby Homs. 
 
 The United Nations observers reported that in addition to the more than 90 dead, they counted more than 300 wounded, Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said. Opposition groups put the death toll at around 100 killed, including 50 children. 
 
 The United Nations statement stopped short of accusing the government of responsibility for the entire toll. 
 
 Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the United Nations observer mission in Syria, said in a statement that “the killing of innocent children and civilians needs to stop,” but added that the circumstances behind all the deaths remained “unclear.” 
 
 In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton focused on what she described as the “vicious assault that involved a regime artillery and tank barrage on a residential neighborhood.” 
 
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 “Those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account,” she said in a statement. “And the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.” 
 
 Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, issued a statement accusing Syria’s government of committing “new massacres” and added that France would organize a meeting of the roughly 80-member Friends of Syria group as soon as possible. 
 
 The British foreign secretary, William Hague, said Britain was looking for a strong international response and hoped to convene an “urgent” session of the United Nations Security Council “in the coming days.” 
 
 The Syrian National Council, the umbrella opposition organization in exile, condemned the killing and called for three days of mourning. 
 
 Details of what happened were murky, as is often the case in Syria. 
 
 Saleem Kabani, an activist reached via Skype who said he was in the town, said that government forces had shelled Houla heavily all day Friday, also raking it with machine-gun fire and firing mortar shells. There had already been a substantial toll from that assault, he and others said, with some residents killed as their houses collapsed. 
 
 Then gunmen from the Free Syrian Army left the center of the town to try to assault the government checkpoints from which much of the barrage originated, he said. 
 
 Taking advantage of the absence of any armed men inside the village late Friday, government soldiers moved in, along with volunteers from surrounding hamlets, to kill civilians, Mr. Kabani said. 
 
 Another activist in Homs reached via Skype, using only the name Saif, said the people of Houla were demonstrating on Saturday despite renewed shelling. Activists in Houla had told him that more bodies were left on roads exposed to government fire and in houses, he said. 
 
 The government appeared to have anticipated the demonstrations that took place on Saturday in solidarity with Houla. Damascus took on the look of an armed camp on Saturday, with closed shops and a heavy military presence. 
 
 Activists reported demonstrations in at least 10 neighborhoods. Few protesters seemed to accept the government version of events. “The regime kills thousands of Syrian citizens, and Annan’s monitors are watching and writing the number of killed people as if they were game scores,” said Fadi, a 25-year-old demonstrator in the southern Damascus district of Qaddam.
– Six weeks after a supposed cease-fire, the UN has confirmed that pro-government forces killed at least 90 civilians yesterday, including more than two dozen children, reports the BBC. The violence took place in and around the town of Houla, near Homs, after an anti-government protest. About a dozen people were killed in shelling and the rest when pro-regime groups known as shabiha stormed the neighborhood and raided homes, activists tell AP. UN officials called the attacks "indiscriminate and unforgivable," and a "flagrant violation of international law." British Foreign Secretary William Hague has promised to seek a severe global response to the "appalling crime." But Syrian officials blamed the massacre on "terrorists"—their usual word for opposition forces, the New York Times reports. Grisly images have surfaced in amateur videos, one showing 14 dead children laid out in a room, notes AP.