Syria: Assad regime accused of renewing attack on Houla At the same time residents of Houla were trying to run away towards nearby villages. He said 20 tanks had advanced on the town and that more bodies from the massacre, including a family of six, were still being discovered. Meanwhile, government forces were laying siege to other towns across central Syria which had been reoccupied by the Free Syrian Army during the provisional ceasefire. An activist in Rastan, twelve miles to the east of Houla in a belt of mixed Sunni and Alawite towns and villages, said that it had been hit by missiles as it suffered its twelfth consecutive day of bombardment. "The army has surrounded the city," the activist, Suhaib Ali, said. We lack relief materials, medicines, ambulance, we can't even move the injured because we are encircled. The city is being shelled from outside - there are tanks and rocket launchers stationed there. Forces are also attacking Al-Qusair, west of Homs, and there were clashes in Hama to the north and even in the capital Damascus. The regime's spokesman, Jihad al-Makdissi, gave a press conference to deny the regime was responsible for the massacre, saying that it was the work of "armed terrorists" and Arabs from abroad. But numerous witnesses said Alawite militias from neighbouring villages had entered Taldaw, which is Sunni, and shot and bayoneted men, women and children. They moved in after an initial heavy bombardment by regime forces, apparently in retaliation for a Friday demonstration and an attack on army checkpoints by men from the FSA. "The crime was committed by two nearby settlements loyal to the regime, called Al-Qabou, and Shiea," said a man who gave his name as Abu Bilal al-Homsi. The victims were largely from a street on the edge of Taldaw, and among the dead were many members of three families - the Abdulrazzaq, Abbara and Al-Kurdi. The first two were living in the same house, and lost six children under the age of ten, two teenagers, and seven adults, including two over the age of 60, according to the Syrian Network of Human Rights. In a video posted online which appeared to be authentic, a woman survivor, her face covered by a veil, described what happened. "They raided our home," she says. The first stopped and asked who was there in the home. I answered, 'my daughter and the wife of my son,' and told them there were no men inside. There were only women and children. One of them remained outside and the other came in and pushed them into the corner and started firing at them. I survived because I remained standing behind the door. She said the dead included her grand-daughter, aged four, grand-son, aged three, and the child of a cousin, also aged three. "Entire families were killed," another of the women crying in the background breaks in. Had they killed one person only, we would have accepted that patiently. We are accustomed to death. More than 100 people were killed. We searched for shrouds to cover and bury them, but found none.