One hundred and twenty policemen were killed by “armed gangs” in northwest Syria, state television said yesterday, as the authorities warned of a firm response.
Activists who spoke to AFP in Cyprus disputed the official account, speaking instead of a mutiny in the town of Jisrash Shugur, where security forces had been carrying out operations for three days.
“The armed groups are committing a real massacre. They have mutilated bodies and thrown others into the Assi river,” the state broadcaster said. “They have burned government buildings.”
It said a total of 120 police were killed, including 80 at the town’s security headquarters, without specifying the date of the incidents in Jisrash Shugur.
Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar warned in a statement read on television that the authorities would hit back.
“The state will act firmly, with force and in line with the law. It will not stay arms folded in the face of armed attacks on the security of the homeland,” he said.
In its first report yesterday of police deaths in the town, state television spoke of 20 officers killed in an ambush.
“The police and security agents are confronting hundreds of armed men. They have managed to liberate one district controlled by gunmen” in Jisrash Shugur, the channel said.
It said residents of the town, 330 kilometres north of Damascus, had “pleaded for help and the rapid intervention of the army”.
“Armed gangs ambushed police who were on their way to rescue citizens being terrorised” by these gangs, state television said, adding that the groups were armed with “light weapons, grenades and are using residents as human shields”.
Elsewhere, “eight guards at a post office were also killed by armed gangs, who used the building’s gas pipes to blow it up,” it added.
However, two activists who spoke to AFP in Nicosia said the town was calm on yesterday, and spoke of a mutiny at a local security headquarters, where shooting was heard the day before.
“I think they executed policemen who refused to open fire on demonstrators. There was a mutiny in the security service,” one said.