Troops Storm Daraa, at Least 83 Killed across Syria

Syrian troops and pro-regime militias stormed and torched a southern town on Saturday, reports said, as U.N. observers visited a central village where a mass killing has provoked harsh global condemnation.

Hundreds of soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked Khirbet Ghazaleh in the province of Daraa -- the cradle of a 16-month uprising -- amid heavy gunfire, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

An activist on the ground who identified himself as Bayan Ahmed gave a similar account, saying pro-regime militias were setting alight houses in the town.

"The army entered without resistance as the rebel Free Syrian Army left town. The shelling has wounded dozens of people but we don't have medical resources to treat them," he added.

Elsewhere, a pregnant woman was among 72 people killed across the country on Saturday, the Observatory said, a day after 118 people died including dozens of civilians gunned down by troops at anti-regime protests.

It said the toll comprised 34 civilians, including nine women and seven children, 17 rebels and at least 21 soldiers.

An Agence France Presse journalist said fighting Saturday near the Turkish border between government troops and rebel fighters left at least 10 rebels dead and 15 wounded.

A suicide truck bomb in the central province of Hama has killed three civilians and one security officer, Syria’s state news agency reported.

SANA said the attacker, who covered the bomb with onions, detonated the explosives in the town of Muhrada.

The anti-regime Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bomb targeted the local military security headquarters. Both said the dead included two women and a child.

Bombings of security buildings throughout Syria have grown more common as the uprising against President Bashar Assad has become dominated by the rebel insurgency seeking to overthrow his regime.