Syrian Govt Denies Existence of Mass Grave as Opposition Calls General Strike

Syria's opposition called for a general strike Wednesday in defiance of a government campaign to crush pro-democracy protests, as the army pressed its siege of the restive town of Tall Kalakh, the latest target of its violent crackdown.

"Wednesday will be a day of general strike in Syria," said a statement posted on the Facebook page of the Syrian Revolution 2011, an Internet-based opposition group that has been a motor of protests that erupted two months ago.

"It will be a day of punishment for the regime by the revolutionaries and the people of free will," it added.

"Let's transform this Wednesday into a Friday (the regular day for protests), with mass protests, no schools, no universities, no stores or restaurants open and even no taxis."

The strike call came amid reports of corpses and dozens of wounded left lying in the streets of the western town of Tall Kalakh where the army is now concentrating its crackdown.

"It looks like a ghost town here, I can see a corpse lying at the entrance of the town and there are dozens of wounded that we cannot evacuate," said a Sunni Muslim local resident early Tuesday, reached by telephone.

"This is a massacre," he added, his voice charged with emotion. "We never expected them to be so brutal.

Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, told Agence France Presse by telephone on Monday that the mass grave was discovered in Daraa after the army allowed residents to venture outside their homes for two hours daily.

"They discovered a mass grave in the old part of town but authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent residents from recovering the bodies, some of which they promised would be handed over later," Qurabi said.

However, Syria's interior ministry has denied the existence of a mass grave in the southern town of Daraa, which the army had raided to put down anti-regime protests, SANA news agency said Tuesday.

"This information is totally false," an interior ministry official told the state news agency, adding that the reports were part of a "campaign of incitement" against Syria.

A rights activist told AFP on Monday that a mass grave had been discovered in the old town of Daraa, at the heart of protests roiling the country for two months and virtually shut off from the outside world.

"The army (Monday) allowed residents to venture outside their homes for two hours a day," said Ammar Qurabi, of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

"They discovered a mass grave in the old part of town but authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent residents from recovering the bodies, some of which they promised would be handed over later," he said by telephone.

Meanwhile, Syrian government agents chased students who were protesting against Assad's regime at a northern campus, beating them with batons and injuring dozens, a human rights activist said.

Mustafa Osso said the agents tried to break up a protest of about 2,000 students at the campus in Aleppo, Syria's second city. He said many of the students were chased into their dormitories and badly beaten.

The university has seen several anti-regime demonstrations in the past weeks.