Horrified Hillary Clinton said Bashar Assad’s “rule by murder and fear” must end after dozens of children were massacred in one of the Syrian regime’s deadliest attacks in the country’s 14-month-old uprising.

At least 32 children and more than 60 adults were killed in fighting in the centre of Syria yesterday, the head of the UN observer team in the country said tonight.

Activists have raised the number of those reportedly killed by regime forces in a district of central Syria to more than 90.

LEBANESE troops battled Islamist militants based in a Palestinian refugee camp yesterday and more than 40 people were killed in Lebanon’s bloodiest internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war.