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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist organization based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria, said at least 50 bodies had been located, some scattered along the banks of a small river in the Bustan al-Kaser neighborhood. Other reports put the grim tally at 65.

"This is another new massacre that has been committed in Syria, adding to the constant massacres that have been occurring, while the world watches silently and the international and Arab community are being hypocrites," the Syrian Observatory said in statement.

The gruesome video emerged as the United Nations reported a fresh upsurge in the number of refugees known officially to have fled the country, bolstering the total in neighboring countries to more than 700,000 from 500,000 in December.

At the same time, rebel fighters seeking Mr. Assad's overthrow appeared to have made lightning advances in the east of the country, raiding a security office in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, where government forces have seemed to reduce their presence to concentrate on the center, giving rebels more freedom to maneuver and in some cases siphon fuel from gas and oil fields there.

In Aleppo, Syria's most populous city, video on YouTube — which was not independently verifiable — showed the shadow of a cameraman moving from one corpse to the next, briefly halting at each body. Another video showed five bodies jammed into a metal container with more corpses lined up on the street outside and yet more on the flatbed of a pickup truck.

Crowds of civilians milled around, some of them wearing blue surgical gloves.

It was not clear when the men had died or who they were. One man said the killers had chosen their victims because they were Sunni Muslims.

The ever-bloodier conflict began in March, 2011, as a peaceful protest but has since spiraled into civil war.

In Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Tuesday that there had been an "unrelenting flow of refugees" across Syria's borders with other countries, principally Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, Reuters reported.

The highest numbers were in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon but smaller numbers had been registered in Egypt and North Africa, Sybella Wilkes, a spokesman for the refugee agency, told Reuters.

The total now stood at around 712,000, meaning that some 200,000 have fled in less than two months.

"We are trying to clear a backlog of people because the numbers have gone up so dramatically" in Jordan and Lebanon particularly, Ms. Wilkes was quoted as saying.