Robert Mackey writes: As my colleagues Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad report, the United Nations mission in Syria said in a statement that its observers had visited a village near Homs on Saturday and “counted more than 32 children under the age of 10 and over 60 adults killed,” after what Syrian activists described as a government massacre.

Activist YouTube channels filled with extremely graphic, distressing images of dead children, which prompted large, angry street demonstrations across Syria. The arrival of U.N. military observers in the village of Houla was caught on video by activists, who also posted a somber clip of the monitors viewing rows of corpses prepared for burial.

Later, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office said in a statement condemning the killings: “Observers from the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria have viewed the bodies of the dead and confirmed from an examination of ordnance that artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood.” [Continue reading…]