Twelve executions in fresh Syria 'massacre': activists

Syrian government forces summarily executed 12 civilians on their way home from work in a fertiliser factory in Qusayr, activists in the central town told AFP by telephone on Friday.

"The workers were on a bus when they were forced to stop at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Qusayr," said Salim Kabbani of the Local Coordination Committees, which organise protests on the ground.

"Regime forces tied their hands behind their backs and shot them."

He said abuses had become routine in Qusayr, a town southwest of the flashpoint central city of Homs. "The checkpoint where the workers were killed is dangerous, and people are often tortured there."

The reported killings late on Thursday afternoon came as Syrian activists threatened a "volcano of rage" on Friday over the killing of civilians by government forces as a deadline set by rebel fighters passed for Damascus to honour a UN-backed ceasefire.

State media called for nationwide prayers in memory of the more than 100 dead, many of them children, near the central city of Houla last week, after an official inquiry pinned the blame on the rebels.

But international outrage was mounting after UN military observers on the ground held the government responsible. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was travelling to Berlin and Paris for a visit set to be dominated by the escalating Syria crisis as the US and Germany upped the pressure on Moscow to turn its back on President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

On the first Friday since the killings in Houla, opposition activists called on Syrians to rise up across the country in honour of the 49 children who were among the 108 dead counted by the UN mission.

"A new volcano of rage is exploding thanks to them," protest organisers said on their Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page, which has been a major engine of the 15-month uprising against Assad's rule.

"For those pure souls who sacrificed themselves at the altar of our freedom and sacrificed their blood... tomorrow Friday, we will rise up in such a resounding way, and we promise them, there will be no second Houla," they said.

The rhetoric came as UN rights chief Navi Pillay warned that Syria and the entire region are in danger if a full-fledged conflict erupts in the country, and urged a probe into the Houla massacre.

"Otherwise, the situation in Syria might descend into a full-fledged conflict and the future of the country, as well as the region as a whole could be in grave danger," the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement read to special meeting of the UN Human Rights Council called to discuss the conflict.

Several areas of rebel bastion Qusayr have been under non-stop shelling by government forces, Kabbani said. "We have a very high number of wounded, and we fear many of them will die because we don't have the medical materials we need to treat them."

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had asked the UN military observer mission in Syria to visit Qusayr to investigate the latest killings.

The Obseratory's head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the persistent bloodshed made a mockery of the UN-backed ceasefire that was supposed to take effect from April 12.

"The ceasefire has been dead for a month," he said.

"In Qusayr, the regime has shelled incessantly in recent days because it is trying to regain control of an area it has lost control of to rebels."