Insight: Syrian village gives up secrets after dawn killings

"(Reuters) - Awakened by the sound of gunfire, Ahmad could hear the armed men knocking on his brother's door, shouting insults and calling the family "dogs".
Ahmad's sister-in-law said the gunmen told her husband to "bow to your god, Bashar" -- the Syrian president. She and her husband and their two teenage sons were dragged towards the village square.
"She told me her son's knees were bloodied as they kicked and dragged him," Ahmad said.
When the violence was over, Ahmad ventured out from his hiding place in an attic. In less than two hours, Baida, his picturesque village near the Mediterranean, had become the scene of one of the worst mass killings in Syria's two-year-old war.
As the country fragments under the weight of civil strife, troops loyal to Bashar al-Assad have made gains against rebel fighters in a counteroffensive to secure a corridor linking the capital Damascus with the president's clan heartland on the coast. Baida, a tiny pocket of rebel sympathizers surrounded by pro-Assad villages, was an ideal place for the government to deliver a harsh message....."