Mass burials near Damascus amid massacre report

AMMAN (AP) -- Dozens of bodies have been buried in mass graves in a Syrian town where activists claim more than 300 people have been killed in the past week.

A British-based activist group says 32 bodies were found in the streets of the Damascus suburb (Daraya) today. It says they had been killed by "gunfire and summary executions."

That group says at least 320 people have been killed in the past week in a major government offensive to take back control of rebel-held areas in and around the capital. Another activist group puts the death toll at almost twice that number.

Britain's minister for Middle East affairs, Alistair Burt, says if confirmed, the massacre "would be an atrocity on a new scale requiring unequivocal condemnation from the entire international community."

President Bashar Assad, in comments carried by state media, reiterated his long-standing claim that a foreign plot was behind the uprising against his rule and said he would not allow it to succeed "whatever the price might be."