Seventeen people, including ten women were killed on Saturday during the shelling of Syrian southern town of Deraa, London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said.
According to the OSDH, ten women were among 17 victims of the shelling, carried out by the troops, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
The organization which tracks the cases of violence in Syria through numerous sources, also said on its Facebook page that “other areas of Deraa are witnessing intense clashes between Syrian troops and rebel fighters.”
Russian Foreign Ministry however has spoken out against the OSDH, citing its unreliability as the information source. According to Russian diplomats, there are only two people working in the group, Rami Abdel Rahman, the OSDH head and the secretary-translator. Abdel Rahman, who resides in London and runs a café there, has not completed secondary school.
Apart from Deraa’s victims, the OSDH reported about 44 people killed across the country on Friday, with nearly half of them killed in Homs and capital of Damascus.
Two massacres in the country’s village of Houla and Hama in late May and early June that killed dozens, including women and children, prompted fears that the six-point peace plan, brokered by the UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, will not be adhered to despite its official implementation in mid-April.
Over 9,000 people have been killed in clashes between the government and opposition forces in Syria since the start of the uprising against the Bashar al-Assad regime, according to UN estimates.
