DAMASCUS
At least 34 people, including a child and four women, were killed in attacks staged by the Syrian regime in several cities on Wednesday, activists said.
Syrian regime forces killed 19 in the suburbs of Damascus, four in Hama, Aleppo and Daraa each, two in Idlib and one in Deir-uz Zor, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC) released a statement indicating that Free Syrian Army troops attacked the 17th division in Rakkah and captured 10 regime soldiers.
The statement said that the regions around the historical Umayyad Mosque and malls in Aleppo were exposed to regime forces' howitzer and artillery attacks.
Regime forces also attacked the Haresta, Douma, Dariya, Berze, Yarmouk, and Kabun regions of capital Damascus, an area where opposition fighters are generally located, with missiles and howitzers, SRGC added.
Meanwhile, the SNHR said that the death toll among children had exceeded 12,000 since clashes broke out in Syria in March, 2011.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in almost three years of conflict in Syria and over two million Syrians are now registered as refugees in neighboring countries, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, according to the UN. The Microfinance Program Director at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Alex Pollock, said last week that the total cost of Syria crisis had reached $103.1 billion by the first half of 2013.
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