Pat Dollard

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New York Times:

CAIRO — Syria’s state news agency reported Monday that “armed gangs” had killed 120 police, security personnel and civilians in multiple attacks in a northwestern town, and that residents were “pleading” for the army to intervene. The reports could not be independently verified, but regardless of whether the numbers are inflated, they appear likely to presage an even harsher crackdown on antigovernment protesters.

The reported number of dead ballooned over the course of the day — from 28 to 40 to 80 to 120 — as state media described escalating violence in the town of Jisr al-Shughour by the unspecified armed fighters, including an ambush of police, the bombing of a post office and gunfire from rooftops.

By the end of the day, state media said police and security forces were clashing with hundreds of armed men who had taken control of some areas of the town. But the state broadcaster showed no images from the town, despite scrolling text on Syrian television that spoke of a “massacre.”

Protesters could not be immediately reached in the area, but opposition activists repudiated any suggestion that antigovernment protesters had mounted such attacks. “I have seen no evidence of organized violence by protesters against the regime,” said Wissam Tarif, a Syrian human rights activist currently outside the country. “Protesters do not have weapons they could even use against tanks and helicopters, which the regime is using.”

Syria has been gripped by a popular uprising against four decades of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family since mid-March, but the government has blamed the unrest on what it calls Islamic extremists and foreign conspirators bent on destroying the country and its fragile balance of ethnic groups and religious denominations. However, even supporters of the government have said the unrest in Syria is far too widespread to validate the official explanation.

Fears of anti-government retaliation have grown, but no reports have suggested such high tolls before.

The reports came a day after demonstrators and rights activists said Syrian military forces using helicopter gunships and armored cars mounted with machine guns had killed at least 25 people in the town over the weekend. At least 13 others died in nearby villages.

Syrian state media said police officers and security personnel heading to Jisr al-Shughour were ambushed by the “armed gangs.” In what appeared to be a separate attack, eight guards in the town were reportedly killed when pipe bombs exploded in a post office.

Later, state media said that at least 37 people were killed in a security station where residents had taken shelter from the armed gangs. The reports said the gangs were firing from rooftops and behind barricades.

Even before the reports of violence, security forces appeared to redeploy on Sunday from other towns to join the harsh crackdown in the northern province of Idlib in a swift effort to put down the latest flare-up in the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The number of protesters in Idlib swelled in recent weeks, said Mr. Tarif, the rights activist.

Government tanks were reported to have pulled back slightly from the city of Hama on Sunday, a day after they were sent in to confront mourners for the 65 protesters killed Friday. The city was the site of a 1982 massacre when security forces commanded by President Hafez al-Assad, the current president’s father, bombarded it in a siege that killed at least 10,000 people.

The uprising began in the southern town of Dara’a and quickly spread, after residents there rose up against the Assad regime following the arrest and torture of a group of school children accused of spray painting anti-government graffiti on a school house wall. The children, aged eight to fifteen, were badly beaten and had their fingernails pulled out, activists said.

The government has responded to the uprising with a brutal drumbeat of mass arrests and military operations against a number of cities and towns that activists say has killed more than 1,000 people.

As the crackdown has continued to grind across the country, fears have grown that some of Syria’s peaceful protesters could begin to respond in kind.

“We live moment to moment, just waiting,” said one activist in Lattakia who declined to be named. “There have been a lot of killings and some people are becoming more extremist. Fear is creating a negative reaction.”