The Syrian opposition on Friday denounced a "large-scale massacre" by regime forces and militiamen in a Sunni village in the northwest after a watchdog said at least 50 people, mostly civilians, were killed. The Syrian National Coalition called in a statement for international action, citing witness reports of civilians being stabbed to death in Bayda, a Sunni village outside the port of Banias.

Arab Idol contestant Abdel Karim Hamdan brought millions of television viewers to tears when he sang about the plight of his home town, the Syrian battered city of Aleppo. "Aleppo, a flood of suffering, how much blood is shed in my country!" the 25-year-old sang in the Lebanon studio where the hugely popular show, modelled on British hit Pop Idol, is recorded. "I wanted to sing the pain of my country," Hamdan told AFP in between rehearsals at the pan-Arab channel MBC in Beirut.

Duty Editor: James Hossack Tel: +852 2829 6211 -- TOP STORIES -- + Dutch queen to abdicate, son to be enthroned + New Italian PM faces early test on austerity + NBA player comes out, in US sports milestone Netherlands-royal,WRAP THE HAGUE Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander becomes Europe's youngest monarch as his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicates and his country hails the avowedly 21st-century king with a massive orange-hued party.

A ground-to-ground missile was fired on a town in northern Syria on Sunday and killed at least four civilians, two of them children, a watchdog reported, as violence shook several Damascus neighbourhoods. Anti-regime activists of the Aleppo Media Centre said the missile, which slammed into a residential area of Tal Rifaat, was a Scud, although this could not be independently verified. The attack also killed two women, wounded several other people and destroyed many homes in the town in Aleppo province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.