Syria's vice president Farouq al-Sharaa met an Iranian delegation on Sunday, Syria's state news agency said, marking the official's first appearance in weeks and ending rumors by opposition activists that he had defected from President Bashar al-Assad's government.
SANA news agency said the vice president would meet with a parliamentary delegation from Assad's main regional ally Iran, led by senior legislator Aleddin Borougerdi.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister
Walid Muallem said on Sunday that Syria's regime will only look at negotiating with the
opposition after "purging" rebels from the country.
"The plan for negotiations between the Syrian government
and opposition will begin after purging Syria of armed groups," Muallem
was quoted as saying after meeting the chairman of the Iranian
parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, Aladin
Borujerdi, in Damascus.
Assad's forces accused of massacre near Syrian capital
Syrian opposition activists
accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces on Sunday of committing a massacre
of scores of people in a town close to the capital that the army had just
retaken from rebels.
More than 200 bodies were found in
houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the
southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said most had been killed
"execution-style" by troops on house-to-house raids.
Due to restrictions on non-state media
in Syria, it was impossible to independently verify the accounts.
The official state news agency said:
"Our heroic armed forces cleansed Daraya from remnants of armed terrorist
groups who committed crimes against the sons of the town and scared them and
sabotaged and destroyed public and private property."
The Local Coordination Committees, an
activists' organization, said Assad's forces killed 440 people across Syria on
Saturday, including dozens of women and children, in one of the highest death
tolls since the uprising against his rule broke out in March last year.
Video footage from activists showed
numerous bodies of young men side-by-side at the Abu Suleiman al-Darani mosque
in Daraya, many with what looked like gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road
shelled the southern neighborhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into
Saturday night and fighting raged in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital,
residents said.
REUTERS/LBCI
For the full LBCI report, please watch the video above