BBC News with Nick Kelley.

Activists in Syria have detailed what they are calling two massacres by government forces and Alawite militia. The Activists say they've documented the killing of nearly 150 people in Sunni Muslim areas of Baniyas and al-Bayda since Thursday. Unverified mobile phone footage posted on the internet shows the corpses of women and children. As BBC's Jim Muir now reports

An activist records himself on the mobile phone as he searches through a house in the dark. He finds 20 bodies including nine of children. Oh, God, he says a pregnant mother and her baby and her five children. The video shows the bodies of children and women huddled together in death. We can't independently verify this and a stream of other videos posted on the internet by activists. But they appear to boast of their claims that government forces and the allied, Alawite militia known as the Shabiha murdered many Sunni civilians including entire families at close range after overrunning the village of al-Bayda on Thursday and Sunni quarters of nearby Baniyas yesterday.

Results have been released from the first elections in Iraq since the departure of US troops in December 2011. The provincial polls put the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s State of Law coalition in first place in 7 of the 12 provinces that voted last month, notably in Baghdad and oil-rich Basra in the South. The Sunni dominated Iraqiya bloc suffered poor results picking up no more than three seats in any of the provinces.