Today’s Death toll: 121. The Breakdown:  toll includes 7 children and 3 women. 62 in Damascus and Suburbs (38 found field-executed in Hameh), 23 in Aleppo, 15 in Homs, 8 in Idlib, 7 in Hama, 3 in Daraa and 3 in Deir Ezzor (LCC).

Amid the hodgepodge of groups that make up the armed opposition to Bashar Assad, one organization is coming dramatically to the fore

Across from Hermel and inside Syrian territory, a string of villages inhabited by Lebanese Shiites has been clashing with majority-Sunni villages that back the opposition in the countryside of Qusayr, on the outskirts of Homs. There have been a series of tit for tat kidnappings between the groups, and some have suggested that Hezbollah is providing military support to the Shiite villagers.

Allowing Syria’s chaos to continue will damage too many strategic American interests and, perhaps more importantly, squander an opportunity to affect precisely the kind of change that will make the world a safer place as America’s ability to “police it” inevitably fades.

People whose lives have been decimated by conflict should receive as much assistance as we can give them. Yet Palestinian refugees from Syria, escaping the same violence, destruction and dangers and seeking the same protection, relief and refuge as their Syrian counterparts, are being excluded on grounds of nationality.

Ammar Abdulhamid & Khawla Yusuf: The Shredded Tapestry: The State of Syria Today