At least 65 bodies, most with their hands tied and bullet wounds to the back of the head, were found on a river bank in the city of Aleppo, the latest atrocity to be perpetrated by the Syria regime. There is no identification on the bodies, but Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the Free Syrian Army say the victims were all arrested by the Assad regime, and were all executed recently. Some had been missing for weeks, and worried relatives decended on the scene to see if their loved ones were among the dead.

The bodies were found along the river Quwaiq in Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and the site of some of the worst government abuses over the last two years of fighting. Many of the corpses were hidden by the water and the rebels suspect that there may be many more still in the river and that "there must be more than 100" victims in total. Most were just teenagers.

See this image of the river massacre: fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn… It will become iconic.

— BSyria (@BSyria) January 29, 2013

In one bit of good news for the rebels, there were able to overrun a government intelligence center in the city of Deir el-Zou, freeing 11 prisoners there before they met a similar fate.

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Dashiell Bennett