US is rethinking its opposition to arming Syria's rebels: Hagel

WASHINGTON // The Obama administration is rethinking its opposition to arming rebels opposed to the Syrian government, the US defence secretary Chuck Hagel said yesterday.
Mr Hagel told a news conference at the Pentagon that the administration was considering a range of options.
"Arming the rebels - that's an option," he said. "We must continue to look at options."
He said he personally had not decided whether it would be wise to provide weapons to the rebels.
Mr Hagel's announcement came as activists reported that state forces and militias loyal to the Syrian president Bashar Al Assad committed a "massacre" when they stormed the coastal village of Baida yesterday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 50 people including women and children were killed.
Elsewhere in Syria, government troops backed by warplanes pushed into the central districts of Homs city in an effort to oust rebels from the country's third-largest urban centre, activists said.
The regime pounded rebel-held districts with artillery and carried out at least one air strike on a residential neighbourhood, killing seven people, four of them children, the Observatory said.
It said regime troops regained control of Wadi Sayeh district in the centre of Homs early yesterday morning. The neighbourhood is strategically important for the government, and its forces are trying to dislodge opposition fighters from several central districts that have been under rebel control for more than a year.
In the northern city of Aleppo, rebels overran the headquarters of Mr Al Assad's antiterrorism forces, according to the Aleppo Media Centre activists group. The building's capture was the latest in a string of rebel victories in Syria's largest city, where opposition fighters are trying to expand their hold.
* Associated Press with additional reporting by Reuters