JISR AL-SHUGHOUR, Syria, June 7 (UPI) -- Government tanks converged on the Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour Tuesday night as the army massed for what may be an all-out assault, observers said.
The government claims insurgents killed more than 120 security force members last weekend.
Most residents had fled to nearby Turkey before the sharp escalation in a three-month uprising, The Guardian reported.
The town of more than 41,000 was largely abandoned, the British newspaper said.
The Syrian government had vowed to retaliate after claiming armed gangs in a Syrian town had killed at least 120 people -- most if not all of them police and security officers.
"We will deal strongly and decisively and according to the law, and we will not be silent about any armed attack that targets the security of the state and its citizens," Interior Minister Ibrahim Shaar said in a statement broadcast on state-run Syrian Television.
Syrian army units, which previously stayed out of the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour, would now "carry out their national duty to restore security," Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud said separately.
Residents of the largely Sunni Muslim town 20 miles from the Turkish border warned there would be massive bloodshed if authorities attempted to restore control by force, the BBC reported.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said 120 police and security personnel were killed in the town in a Monday-morning ambush of police and security personnel by heavily armed "terrorist members" who used medium-size weapons, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to commit "a real massacre."
The reported attack also included a post-office bombing and rooftop gunfire, SANA said.
The agency, which reported the incident Monday night Syrian time, sent a series of dispatches raising the police and security-personnel death toll from 28 to 43, to 80, and then to 120 within an hour.
Syrian TV included civilians among the dead.
There was no way to confirm or reconcile the figures independently because Syria has not let foreign journalists into the country, although a few are there writing under pseudonyms.
The government reports were quickly challenged by activists, town residents and others who said the town was quiet Monday after a violent weekend, which included infighting between security forces and defections by young army officers.
A resident told The Guardian, which is secretly reporting from Syria, about the weekend clashes between plainclothes security forces and the army, but said this could not account for the reported death toll.
Syrian army 1st Lt. Abdul Razaq Tlass appeared on the al-Jazeera satellite channel early Tuesday, denying the regime had fought armed gangs Monday. He urged other officers to protect the people and side with the protesters over the regime.
Tlass -- whose defection The Wall Street Journal said was apparently the first announced on TV -- comes from a large military family that includes retired Lt. Gen. Mustafa Tlass, a former Syrian defense minister who helped secure Bashar Assad's rule after the June 2000 death of his father, Hafez Assad.
"Remember your duties," the younger Tlass said on al-Jazeera.
Syria's government has characterized the 3-month-old protest movement as instigated by armed extremist groups backed by foreign agents.
The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote this week on a resolution to condemn Syrian violence against protesters.
Human rights organizations say more than 1,200 civilians, including 77 children, have been killed since the protests broke out in mid-March. Syrian officials say more than 200 government personnel have been killed.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times said the Syrian regime suffered its first high-profile defection Tuesday. Syria's ambassador to France, Lamia Chakkour, announced in a statement broadcast on French television that she was resigning from her post, the Times said.
