BEIRUT (AP) — A video has emerged showing more than a dozen bloodied corpses in Syria, some of them piled on top of each other and in military uniforms.
The government says they are victims of a "massacre" by rebels in the northern province of Aleppo.
The circumstances of the killings were not immediately clear. But in the video -- which The Associated Press could not independently verify -- the narrator says the dead were pro-regime gunmen.
Syria's state-run news agency says terrorist groups had killed and mutilated at least 25 people in a rebel-held area in the Aleppo countryside. The government refers to rebels as terrorists.
An activist in the area says rebels regularly collect the bodies of the dead from the government side and dump them by the side of the road so troops can collect them later.
Also today, a Syrian activist group says four senior army officers have defected from the regime. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights provided a video purporting to show two brigadier generals and two colonels who declared they were joining the opposition.
%@AP Links
157-c-13-(Mark Lavie (lah-VEE'), AP Middle East correspondent)-"President Bashar Assad"-AP Middle East Correspondent Mark Lavie in Cairo reports four senior Syrian Army officers have defected to the opposition. (22 Jun 2012)
<<CUT *157 (06/22/12)>> 00:13 "President Bashar Assad"
156-v-30-(Mark Lavie (lah-VEE'), AP Middle East correspondent)--Four Syrian Army officers have defected. More from AP Middle East Correspondent Mark Lavie in Cairo. (22 Jun 2012)
<<CUT *156 (06/22/12)>> 00:30
