Syria:14 Dead, Nuclear Scientist Assassinated

Syrian forces killed fourteen civilians and unidentified attackers assassinated the nuclear engineer Aws Abdel Karim Khalil in the Syrian city of Homs, 160 kilometers north of Damascus on Wednesday.

The “2011 Syrian Revolution against Bashar Assad” Facebook page disclosed 12 of the civilians’ names. The names are: Al-Mounjid Bachir Mansour, a person from Al Rozz, Lieutenant Ahmad Khalaf, the recruit Mohammad Hasyan, Abdul Menhem Bahbuh, Moussa al-Zuluk, Zuheir Traboulsi, Jamal Sifo, Mahmud Hilal, Moussa Abdul Hadi al-Danaf, Sharif Moussa, and Fayez Salam.

Earlier Wednesday, unidentified attackers killed a nuclear engineer in the Syrian city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Nuclear engineer Aws Abdel Karim Khalil was killed this morning by unknown attackers," the Britain-based rights group said in a statement.

On Tuesday in the same city, unidentified attackers killed Mohamed Ali Aqil, deputy rector the architecture faculty at al-Baath University, and Nael Dakhil, director of the military petrochemical school.

Rights activists in the city accuse Syrian authorities of carrying out the killings.

Rights activists, who set up an alliance under the name al-Ghad on September 18, accuse the authorities of having "killed scientific personalities in Homs, trying to repeat the scenario of assassinations" perpetrated in Syria in the 1980s.

Syria for some six months has been in the throes of a peoples' uprising in which the U.N. says some 2,700 people have been killed by an army crackdown. The authorities in Damascus accuse the West and "armed gangs" of trying to sow chaos in the country.

On Monday, security forces killed nine civilians during a sweep against militants in the northwest, south and center of the country, activists said.