Shelling on Syrian president's hometown kills two

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media say two people have been killed in shelling on President Bashar Assad's ancestral village of Qardaha.

Syria's state broadcaster said on Monday the village has been shelled by "terrorists" for two days straight. It says two people were wounded Sunday.

Qardaha is located in the coastal mountains of northwest Syria. Assad's father, the late president Hafez Assad, was born in Qardaha. He was buried there in 2000.

The village has been largely spared from the violence of Syria's civil war, which grew out of demonstrations in 2011 against the Assad family's four-decade rule.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the shelling, saying two civilians have been killed.