BEIRUT (AP) - Evidence is mounting that there's been a new massacre in Syria's civil war.
Activists are reporting a deadly thrust by government forces as they reclaimed control of a suburb of the capital three days ago. Reports of the death toll in Daraya range from more than 300 to as many as 600.
Video footage posted by activists show rows of corpses, many of them men with gunshot wounds to the head. Images also show the bodies of two babies. During mass burials on Sunday, bodies were sprayed with water from hoses - a substitute for the ritual washing prescribed by Islam in the face of so many dead.
President Bashar Assad was quoted by state media as saying his regime would carry on fighting "whatever the price."
One Damascus activist says it's clear the killings were "collective punishment."
Britain's Middle East minister, Alistair Burt, says if confirmed, the Daraya killings "would be an atrocity on a new scale requiring unequivocal condemnation from the entire international community."
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