What is "houla"

The Houla Region or Houla Plain ( al-Ḥūlāh) is an area consisting of three villages in the Homs Governorate of central Syria, northwest of the city of Homs. The biggest village in the Houla region had 20,041 inhabitants in 2004 and is called Kafr Laha. The second largest village, Taldou, had 15,727 inhabitants in 2004 and is located in the outskirts of Houla. The third village, Tell Dahab had 12,055 inhabitants in 2004. The settlement is essentially a Sunni Muslim town surrounded by Alawite villages. Many of the inhabitants of the Houla village cluster are of Turkmen descent.

Houla was described by 19th-century English scholar Eli Smith as a low-lying tract of land situated at the eastern slope of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range. The 13th-century Syrian geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi visited al-Houla in 1226 during Ayyubid rule noting that the place belonged to Jund Hims ("military district of Homs").

In May 2012, the two villages Taldou and al-Shoumarieh were the location of a major massacre of civilians and continued fighting between the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian military.