Earlier, the Syrian army killed at least 175 militants, most of them foreigners, in an ambush in insurgent-held eastern outskirts of Damascus, state media said on Wednesday, Feb. 26.

However, the Syrian National Coalition disputed the government report, saying the people killed were civilians trying to escape the siege imposed by President Bashar Assad’s forces on suburbs of the Syrian capital.

Lebanon’s Al Manar television, which Hizbullah operates, broadcast complete footage of the ambush with dozens of bodies of men strewn along a rural road running through open fields near Otaiba, a town in the Eastern Ghouta area outside Damascus.

The ambush would be a significant advance for the Syrian army’s effort to cement its hold on the capital and surrounding roads.

Syrian state news agency SANA said most of those killed were Saudi, Qatari or Chechen nationals and belonged to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front or Liwa al-Islam, a Salafist Jihadi group that is one of the biggest and best organized rebel units fighting to topple Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that has been monitoring the atrocities of the war in Syria, backed the regime’s version of the story. It said most of those killed in the attack were members of the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group fighting alongside the rebels.

The Syrian National Coalition called on the United Nations to carry an independent investigation into the attack.