Armed forces loyal to president Bashar Assad have been accused of massacring at least 30 people in renewed violence in Syria.
Activists said government troops fired on homes with mortars and machine guns.
A family of women and children were reported to be among the victims during a day of sectarian killings and kidnappings in the besieged city of Homs.
The violence erupted yesterday, but important details were only emerging a day later.
Video posted online by activists showed the bodies of five small children, five women of varying ages and a man, all bloodied and piled on beds in what appeared to be an apartment after a building was hit in the Karm el-Zaytoun neighbourhood of the city.
A narrator said an entire family had been “slaughtered.”
Heavy gunfire erupted for a second day in the city, which has seen some of the heaviest violence of the 10-month-old uprising against Dr Assad’s rule.
Activists said at least 10 people were killed across the country, four of them in Homs.
Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint outside the northern city of Idlib, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, quoting witnesses on the ground.
In an attempt to stop the bloodshed, the UN Security Council was to hold a closed-door meeting to discuss the crisis, a step toward a possible resolution against the Damascus regime.
The UN says at least 5,400 people have been killed in the government crackdown since March, and the turmoil has intensified as dissident soldiers have joined the ranks of the anti-Assad protesters.
Details of yesterday’s wave of killings in Homs were emerging from residents and activists.
“There has been a terrifying massacre,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, calling for an independent investigation.
The day started with a spate of sectarian kidnappings and killings between the city’s population of Sunnis and Allawites, a Shia sect to which Dr Assad belongs and which is the backbone of his regime, said Mohammad Saleh, an opposition figure in Homs.
There were also a string of attacks by unknown gunmen on army checkpoints.
The violence culminated with the evening killing of the family, Mr Saleh said.
The Observatory said 29 people were killed, including eight children, when a building came under heavy mortar and machine gun fire.
Some residents spoke of another massacre that took place when shabiha - armed regime loyalists - stormed the district, slaughtering residents in an apartment, including children.
“It’s racial cleansing,” said one Sunni resident of Karm el-Zaytoun.
The death toll in Homs city was at least 35, said the Observatory and the Local Co-ordination Committees, an umbrella group of activists.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said gunmen in Syria have kidnapped 11 Iranian pilgrims travelling by road from Turkey to Damascus.
Iranian pilgrims routinely visit Syria - Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world - to pay homage to Shia holy shrines.
UN rights chief Navi Pillay, speaking at the Davos Forum in Switzerland, expressed “great concern that the killings are continuing and in my view it’s the authorities who are killing civilians, and so it would all stop if an order comes from the top to stop the killings.”
Dr Assad’s regime claims terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy are behind the uprising.
International pressure on Damascus to end the bloodshed so far has produced few results.
The Arab League has sent observers to the country, but the mission has been widely criticised for failing to stop the violence. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission.
The UN Security Council has been unable to agree on a resolution since violence began in March because of strong opposition from Russia and China.
A senior Russian diplomat said Moscow will oppose a new draft United Nations resolution on Syria because it fails to take Kremlin’s concerns into account.
Reuters