Assad says terrorists committed massacre

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied on Sunday that his government had anything to do with last week's gruesome Houla massacre, saying that not even "monsters" would carry out such an "ugly crime".

In a televised speech to Parliament, Assad expressed horror over last week's killing of more than 100 people in the central Houla region and blamed terrorists and extremists for the bloodshed.

"If we don't feel the pain, the pain that squeezes our hearts, as I felt it, for the cruel scenes - especially the children - then we are not human beings," Assad said in his first comments on the massacre.