Damascus: In second straight days of bloodshed, scores of of people have been killed in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 47 people were killed while the Local Co-ordination Committees put the death toll at 78.
In the north-west, dozens of army deserters, security forces members and civilians reportedly died in clashes.
The claims have not been independently verified, as foreign media are banned from reporting in Syria.
The UN says more than 5,000 people have been killed across Syria since protests against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March.
Damascus says it is fighting “armed terrorist gangs”, who want to destabilise the country.
The London-based Observatory said that at least 23 people were killed in clashes between army deserters and the security forces in the north-western province of Idlib on Tuesday. It said that dozens of civilians remained besieged by an army offensive in two villages in the Jabal al-Zawiya area.
The group also cited defectors as saying that 100 of their colleagues were “killed or wounded between the villages”, the AFP news agency reported.
