MAARET AL-NUMAN: Murad Hakura says he felt the blood from two executed fellow prisoners seep onto him as he cowered behind a pillar during what he described as a "massacre" of detainees by Syrian troops.
In a dungeon in the northern town of Maaret al-Numan on Monday, soldiers from army intelligence opened fire on detainees killing 65 of them before retreating in the face of a rebel advance, according to Hakura.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, however, says that 20 of a total of 65 detainees, comprising deserters, rebels from the Free Syrian Army and ordinary criminals, were executed.
Hakura, a 32-year-old shopkeeper from the capital Damascus whose family live in Maaret al-Numan, says he was stopped on June 21 at a checkpoint on the highway that runs between the two cities.
He was detained in the old cultural centre in the eastern part of the town that was converted into a prison and used for interrogation by army intelligence. On Tuesday, rebels captured Maaret al-Numan.
More than 80 prisoners, presumed sympathisers of the revolution or soldiers suspected by their superiors of wanting to defect were crammed into two rooms in the basement, Hakura says.
They suffered daily interrogations and torture, being beaten with fists and clubs or electrocuted. One of the officers, whom he named only as Maymun, would "ask the questions while his sidekick Jalal would beat" the victims who were handcuffed or suspended in the boiler room.
As the rebels holed up in the west of the town began to gain ground, the prisoners feared their guards would carry out reprisals.
"But we never imagined what was to happen," Hakura recollects. On Monday afternoon, ahead of the army retreat, two soldiers burst into the room where Hakura and his fellow inmates were kept. "Jalal was one of the two," he says.
The soldiers opened fire immediately with their Kalashnikov assault rifles, "emptying three magazines."
Hakura ducked behind a pillar. "I curled up on the floor and two bodies fell on top of me. I felt their blood seep onto me, heard their prayers and their final groans."
The assailants then went to the room next door, which housed the rest of the prisoners, once again opening fire, he says. The army then fled the compound under rebel fire.
Miraculously, Hakura was not wounded. He administered first aid to those who had been shot, applying tourniquets and trying to stop the bleeding using plastic bags.
The rebels assaulted the building room by room, but the regime troops had already disappeared. "We shouted to them not to open fire, calling the commanders by their first names," Hakura says.
"I saw 28 dead with my own eyes in my cell, and 32 in the room next door. Three of four who had been wounded died shortly afterwards."
The events that he recalls on site match up with what local activists say, and with the horrific images posted on the Internet by rebels, making this the latest on a long list of massacres the regime is accused of committing.
Three days later the two bullet-ridden and blood-stained basement rooms still bear witness to the killings. The thick stomach-churning stench of rotting corpses fills the nostrils as flies gather on pools of congealed blood that make the soles of one's shoes stick to the floor.
A rebel's spray-painted slogan features on one blood-spattered wall: "Another massacre of (President) Bashar al-Assad."
Hakura shows journalists exactly where he took shelter during the shooting, miming the actions that apparently saved his life.
"I didn't do anything wrong (before being arrested)," he asserts. "I was just an ordinary protester."
Kalashnikov in hand, however, he now fights for the armed insurgents on the front line.
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