Syria Army Resumes Houla Assault, 1 Dead

Syrian troops resumed their shelling of the Houla region on Thursday, killing at least one person at the site of a massacre of 108 people last week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"A boy was shot dead today by a sniper," Britain-based Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

"Three others died Wednesday during shelling by the regime forces."

The army shelled three areas of Taldu overnight, where the majority of the Houla massacre victims were killed on May 25, the Observatory said.

Regime forces deployed in large numbers in the area, the monitor added.

On Wednesday, the army used heavy artillery to pound the area, according to the opposition Syrian National Council.

The Observatory said "people are fleeing the peripheries of Houla for the town itself, for fear that a new massacre may be committed."

Of those killed at the weekend, 49 children and 34 women died, many of them summarily executed.

The SNC called on Wednesday on the U.N. observers, deployed in Syria to monitor a truce that has failed to take hold, to go to Houla to protect civilians.

In all, at least 73 people were killed in violence across the country.

More than 13,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since an anti-regime uprising broke out in March last year and the regime of President Bashar Assad responded with a crackdown.