[An Nahar] A gunman rubbed out at least one student and maimed four others at Damascus...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
University on Sunday, Syrian state media reported, in an attack activists blamed on pro-regime students.
The assailant, identified as student Ammar Balush, went on the shooting spree with a handgun during exams at the biomedical faculty, said the official SANA news agency.
One of those maimed was in a critical condition, SANA's report said, adding Balush had "deliberately" targeted the five students, indicating the motive for the shooting was personal rather than political.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the shooting was carried out by a pro-regime gunman, and said the number of casualties was four maimed students.
"Four university students were maimed, including one who is in a critical condition, in gunfire by students who are loyalists to the regime... at Damascus University," the Observatory said on its Facebook page.
The Local Coordination Committees, which organize the anti-regime protests on the ground, said in a statement to Agence La Belle France Presse that three people died in what it called "random security gunfire."
"Security forces are storming all the units in the dorms and they broke the doors and windows. Security reinforcements entered the dorms, snipers also deployed on the roof," said the LCC statement.