Scores of people including women and children were killed in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad’s forces attacked rebels in a suburb of Damascus and targeted the family of a rebel in the coastal northwest.

In the village of al Bayda off the Mediterranean coast, Syrian forces gathered three men from a rebel family, and killed them.  The women and children were rounded up, forced into a room in the home, and killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.  Some reports suggest the civilians were burned alive.

This would be the second atrocity to occur in al Bayda, preceded by the Bayda and Baniyas massacres in May, during which government forces killed more than 100 civilians.

The rebel-leaning Observatory also says Assad's forces ambushed rebels in the strategic suburb of Adra near the capital Damascus.  At least 49 people are dead in that attack.  , killing at least 49 people, a pro-opposition monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the opposition fighters had been killed near Adra, a town that rebels have been fighting to recapture from Assad's forces. The rebels need to control Adra to reestablish a weapons supply route that is now cut off by the government.