Syria violence kills 37, UN Security Council to meet

Homs shaken by reported sectarian killing of family of 14; activists: Security forces kill 37 people in violence.

By REUTERS
United Nations Security Council 311 (R) (photo credit: Mike Segar / Reuters)
United Nations Security Council 311 (R)
(photo credit: Mike Segar / Reuters)
AMMAN - Security forces killed 37 people in Syria on Friday, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks in a revolt against President Bashar Assad.
The UN Security Council was to meet later in the day to discuss Syria before a possible vote next week on a new Western-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting 10 months of bloodshed.
Russia, which joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft, said the Western-Arab version was unacceptable and vowed to block any text calling for Assad's resignation.
There was no let-up in violence on Friday, when anti-Assad protests again erupted after weekly Muslim prayers.
Tank and mortar fire killed 15 people in Hama, a resident said, on the fourth day of an army assault on rebellious districts of the city, where Assad's father crushed an armed Islamist uprising in 1982, killing many thousands.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 22 people killed elsewhere in Syria, including 12 when security forces fired on a funeral march in the southern town of Nowa, five in the normally peaceful city of Aleppo, and four in Homs.
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Machinegun fire wounded five people in the Qusour district of Homs, one activist there said, adding that the city was calmer than it was at the height of Thursday's violence, when 16 people were also killed by mortar fire from security forces.
The state news agency SANA said "terrorists" killed a security man in Homs on Friday and a bomb killed a child and wounded several civilians and security personnel in the Damascus district of Midan.
SANA also said a bomb wounded three civilians and three security men in the northeastern town of Albukamal and that a suicide bomber had wounded two security men at a checkpoint in the northwestern province of Idlib.
Arab League observers headed for the Damascus suburb of Douma, where government troops battled rebel fighters the previous day as the struggle to topple Assad rumbled close to the Syrian capital.