Syrian opposition says dozens killed - San Antonio Express

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad framed his battle with the opposition as a decisive showdown over the fate of the country Wednesday, as opposition groups said at least 50 people had been killed by government forces in a Damascus suburb.

Opposition groups said the Wednesday killings took place in a suburb called Jdeidat Artouz, where civilians came under heavy attack by machine guns and mortar fire from the Syrian military.

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, posted what it said was a live video feed from the site in the early evening, showing what appeared to be at least 20 bodies wrapped in white shrouds lined up in a mass grave.

The claim of a new mass killing at the hands of the government came as human rights groups condemned what appeared to be reprisal killings of Assad loyalists.

A video that circulated Tuesday purportedly showed the execution of government supporters by rebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, raising the specter of more atrocities by both sides.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week warned the rebels against revenge killings.

In the graphic video posted Tuesday, dazed and bleeding men are led out of a building as rebels hoist their AK-47s and chant "Free Army forever! Be ready for us, Assad."

The men are lined up below a mural of Mickey Mouse in what appears to be the courtyard of a school.

Within seconds, a barrage of gunfire breaks out and continues for a full minute, before the person filming the shooting, whose lens is occasionally blocked by a hand, gets in close for a shot of what appears to be four bodies piled in a mangled heap.

Those killed were purportedly senior members of the Berri clan, a family closely allied with the Syrian government and, according to Aleppo residents, linked to organized crime and drug smuggling.

The opposition also has been accused of abuses, but not nearly on the scale as the Syrian government.

Amnesty International issued a report last week that said its researchers had seen a handful of videos "depicting individuals being summarily killed by members of Syrian armed opposition groups."

Human rights observers are concerned that both the scale and the brutality of the attacks could ramp up if the conflict drags on.

"If Bashar (Assad) stays, you will see more of this," said Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors casualties on both sides. "Next time maybe more than 100 people killed. By anybody, the government or the rebels."