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Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/syria-crisis-alawites-idINDEE8BA0EC20121211
Up to 200 Hurt in Attack on Syrian Alawite Village
(Reuters) An attack on a Syrian village on Tuesday killed or injured as many as 200 members of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority sect, activists said. The opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 125 were hurt or killed in a series of explosions that destroyed several houses in the town of Aqrab. An Alawite resident from a nearby town blamed the attack on rebels from Houla, about 8 km. from Aqrab, which suffered a massacre of more than 100 Sunnis last May, in which more than half of the victims were children. A rebel told Reuters that they had surrounded one building where pro-Assad shabbiha militias were using residents hiding there as human shields. "There were 200 people inside and we called on the residents to leave, but the shabbiha held some women and children at gunpoint. Eventually talks fell apart and the government shelled the building," said the rebel.