"Most of those killed were Christians, activists and residents said. Some were from the National Defense Army, a militia which fights alongside President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers, and others were civilians, they said.............................................Many Christians fleeing the violence in Homs city over the past two years have settled in the Christian villages around the area where Saturday's attack took place..............................................More than 100,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, which grew out of a 2011 uprising against 40 years of dynastic rule by the Assad family, and nearly 2 million more have fled the country as refugees."