Hezbollah \'deplores\' Houla massacre in Syria

The Shiite political party and militant group Hezbollah, President Bashar Assad's main Lebanese ally, said on Sunday it deplored the Houla massacre in neighboring Syria. Without assigning a blame for the killings of at least 109 civilians in Houla in central Syria, a statement by Hezbollah said it "strongly condemns the massacre and deplores those who carried it out". The Shiite political group, which the Syrian opposition accuses of backing Assad's military crackdown on the-14 month uprising, along with its patron Iran, is seeking the release of a group of Lebanese Shiites kidnapped last week by an armed Sunni Muslim group in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo. The group crossed from Turkey on the way back from a pilgrimage to Iran.