Syrian rebels kill 60 Shias in east town

Sunni Muslim insurgents have killed about 60 Shi'ite Muslims in a rebel-held eastern Syrian town where President Bashar al-Assad's agents had been trying to recruit and arm fighters for his cause, according to opposition sources yesterday.
The attack was another sign of how a revolt that began more than two years ago with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule is descending into sectarian bloodshed.
In the Damascus area, rebels reported that 27 of their comrades had been killed in an ambush near the town of al-Maraj.
Assad's forces, backed by the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, won a significant victory by seizing the border town of Qusair last week and are now believed to be preparing offensives on rebel-held areas near Damascus and Aleppo.
Meanwhile, Austrian troops, who form the biggest contingent of UN peacekeepers on the Golan Heights, began to withdraw yesterday over security concerns after battles between Syrian soldiers and rebels spilled into the ceasefire zone.
The pullout comes despite UN appeals for more time to find a replacement for the departing soldiers, whose absence Israel fears will leave the plateau open to infiltration by Islamic militants.
It represents yet another headache for the international community as it struggles to find a political solution to the Syrian civil war, which has already killed an estimated 94,000 people, uprooted millions and occasionally spread into neighbouring countries.