Ten children were among at least 48 people killed in northern Syria this week as government forces executed the families of five five reported rebels, AFP reported.
The killings were in the Syrian village of Rityan, north of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Regime forces had entered the village as part of an offensive to try to encircle the rebel-held east of Aleppo and take two Shiite villages to the north of the city.
The monitoring group reported that locals had found the dead bodies when they returned to their homes on Wednesday.
The wives of the five rebel fighters were also said to have been killed.
"The troops and militiamen knew exactly where they lived thanks to the informers who accompanied them," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
"There was no resistance except in one house where a rebel opened fire at troops before being executed along with his family," he added.
Some of the bodies of the dead had reportdely been mutilated.
The heavy fighting claimed the lives of 129 regime loyalists and 116 rebels, including an Al-Nusra commander, according to an Observatory toll.
