Mahmoud, a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of Syria, rests in a field hospital after he was found Monday, Aug. 6, 2012, with three gunshot wounds in the town of Anadan on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. Mahmoud, who would give only one name, described being the only survivor of a massacre in which he and 10 other men were blindfolded, beaten and sprayed with bullets. (AP Photo)

ANADAN, Syria (AP) — The guards pulled him from his cell before dawn on Monday, bound his hands, blindfolded him and drove him to an empty lot in the Syrian city of Aleppo. They sat him in a row with 10 other captives, he said, then cocked their guns and opened fire.

"They sprayed us," recalled 21-year-old Mahmoud, the lone survivor of the latest mass killing of Syria's civil war. "The first bullet hit my chest, then one hit my foot, then my head. As soon as my head got hit, I thought, 'I'm dead.'"

Reports of such killings have surfaced frequently during the 17 months of deadly violence that activists seeking to topple President Bashar Assad say has killed more than 19,000 people. But details are usually scarce — no more than activist reports or amateur videos of bloodied bodies or mass graves posted on YouTube.

Mahmoud related his grisly ordeal to The Associated Press hours after it happened. Struggling to speak, he lay in a bed in a makeshift rebel-run field hospital set up in a wedding hall in this town 13 miles (20 kilometers) north of Aleppo. Bandages covered his foot, head and chest. Plastic vines and colored lights adorned the walls of the darkened building, and two red velvet chairs once used by brides and grooms sat on a small stage.

Mahmoud gave only his first name to protect his family who still live in the area.

While his story could not be independently confirmed, Mahmoud's wounds matched his story and residents who found him and his dead colleagues corroborated certain details.

Together, they painted a picture of the summary slaying of 10 men, at least some of whom had only loose links to the armed rebels seeking to topple the regime. That story jibes with activist claims of the increasingly brutal tactics regime forces are using to try to crush the rebellion that has spread to Aleppo, Syria's largest city.

Syria's uprising started in March 2011 with peaceful protests calling for political reforms that were met with a fierce regime crackdown. Government brutality grew as dissent spread, and many in the opposition took up arms as the conflict morphed into a civil war.

Aleppo has been a stronghold of government support throughout the uprising, with a wealthy business class and many minority communities who fear they'll suffer if Assad falls. Until recently, the city of some 4 million people had been spared the violence that has ravaged other Syrian cities.

But during the last two weeks, rebels have been pushing into Aleppo's neighborhoods, clashing with security forces and torching police stations in a push to "liberate" the city. Syrian media has vowed the army is gearing up for a "decisive battle," while anti-regime activists have reported swelling numbers of troops and tanks on the city's edges.

The Syrian government blames the uprising on armed gangs and terrorists backed by foreign powers that seek to weaken Syria.

It was amid these tensions that Mahmoud, a Palestinian resident of Aleppo, had his fateful brush with Syrian security. On Thursday, Mahmoud said, he and a friend went to collect their paychecks from the thread factory where they work and heard clashes nearby. Soon eight men in civilian clothes stopped them and asked for their IDs and cell phones.

On Mahmoud's phone they found videos of anti-government demonstrations and messages he sent to rebels from the Free Syrian Army, asking God to protect them and make them victorious. The men threw Mahmoud and his friend in the trunk of a car and drove them to a trash dump, where they were blindfolded, bound and beaten with sticks and large rocks before being taken to a security office.

Mahmoud was locked in a crowded cell with about a dozen other men, he said. Each day, some were taken out and new ones brought in.

"We were there for four days and they only gave us water to drink once. They never fed us," he said. "They never asked us anything. Every day it was beating, beating, beating."

Before dawn on Monday, guards pulled Mahmoud and 10 others from their cells and told they were going to see a judge. They were bound at the wrists, blindfolded and driven to Aleppo's Khaldiyehneighborhood, where they were lined up on a patch of rocky soil.

"They sat us all down next to each other, 'You here, you here, you here,'" Mahmoud said. "Then each one cocked his weapon and the shooting started."

Mahmoud was shot three times. Bullets pierced his chest and foot and one grazed his skull. Minutes later, silence returned, and he realized he was still alive.

"I breathed, I said the shehada," he said, referring to the Muslim declaration of faith meant to put him right with God. "I tried to get up then started screaming because blood was coming out of me."

He scraped his face on a rock to remove the blindfold and crawled to where some nearby residents found him.

Among them was a 22-year-old electrician who said he heard the gunfire early Monday and worried that people were being killed because he had discovered six bodies in the same spot a day earlier. He showed videos of the victims on his cell phone, their bodies piled atop each other covered in blood, some bearing large bruises that appeared to be from beatings. He said all had been shot dead.

He and others asked not to have their names published because they have to pass through government checkpoints to get home.

The killings shocked residents of Khaldiyeh, a working-class neighborhood on Aleppo's northwest side that has seen little violence until now. While many residents support the rebels, they have not established a foothold in the area, and the relative quiet has drawn thousands of people fleeing violence in other Aleppo neighborhoods or nearby villages.

As Mahmoud spoke, a white pickup pulled up outside the field hospital with the bodies of nine of the men killed Monday. The body of the tenth victim had been taken away by his family. All still had their hands bound and two still wore blindfolds. Two had bullet wounds to their heads, and others had blood on their faces and chests or coming out of their ears. None wore shoes.

Those killings convinced one Khaldiyeh resident who helped collect the bodies that the neighborhood needs arms.

"We want the Free Army to come to our neighborhood to protect us," he said. "If they can't come, then they need to give us weapons so we can defend ourselves."

The field hospital's doctor, Mohammed Ajaj, said he is no longer shocked when the dead and wounded pass through town on their way to burial in nearby villages or for treatment across the northern border in Turkey.

"We've gotten used to it," he said.

An 18-year-old activist who helped collect the bodies said none of them had IDs.

"We really know nothing about them," he said, adding that he would stop in neighboring villages to see if anyone recognized them before delivering them to a morgue further north.

"If nobody claims them, we'll take their photos and put them on our Facebook page so their families can find out that they're dead," he said.

• by Kristina Chew
• August 6, 2012

FILE - In this Oct. 13, 2010 file photo, a man walks past the Standard Chartered Bank building in Hong Kong. The London-based bank schemed with the Iranian government to launder $250 billion from 2001 to 2007, leaving the United States' financial system "vulnerable to terrorists," New York's financial regulator charged Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A British bank schemed with the Iranian government to launder $250 billion from 2001 to 2007, leaving the United States' financial system "vulnerable to terrorists," New York's financial regulator charged Monday.

State Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky signed an order that requires London-based Standard Chartered Bank to answer his questions following an investigation into "wire stripping," the practice of removing crucial identifiers in financial transactions.

The state agency called the bank a rogue institution and quoted one of its executives as saying: "You (expletive) Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians."

The bank conspired with its Iranian clients to route nearly 60,000 different U.S. dollar payments through Standard Chartered's New York branch "after first stripping information from wire transfer messages used to identify sanctioned countries, individuals and entities," according to agency's order.

The order said the transactions provided the bank with millions of dollars in fees at a time when such trade was restricted.

Standard Chartered Bank said in a statement Monday that it was reviewing "its historical U.S. sanctions compliance and is discussing that review with U.S. enforcement agencies and regulators." It said it couldn't predict when the review and the discussions would be completed "or what the outcome will be."

The bank also said it had no prior notice of the order.

A government official said Monday that the FBI's New York office has been investigating the matter to determine if criminal charges should be brought. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the probe and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

The state agency said the bank's actions "left the U.S. financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity."

The bank stripped information from the money transfers that is used to identify countries being sanctioned and replaced it with false entries or returned it to Iran for "wire stripping" and resubmission, according to the order.

The bank "developed various ploys that were all designed to generate a new payment message for the New York branch that was devoid of any reference to Iranian clients," according to the order.

The order also identifies an October 2006 "panicked message" from a London group executive director who worried the transactions could lead to "very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the group."

If proven, the scheme would violate state money-laundering laws. The order also accuses the bank of falsifying business records, obstructing governmental administration, failing to report misconduct to the state quickly, evading federal sanctions and other illegal acts.

Between 2004 and 2007, about half the period covered by the order, the department claims Standard Chartered hid from and lied about its Iranian transactions to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Before 2008, banks were allowed to transact some business with Iran, but only with full reporting and disclosure, the order states.

In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department stopped those transactions because it suspected they helped pay for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and finance terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah. The order states the bank has to provide information and answer to its questions to determine if any of its funding aided the groups or Iran's nuclear program.

The order said the bank operates in 70 markets as a leading international banker with clients who are among the largest corporations and financial institutions in the world. The order notes the bank states in its own documents that its success is because of its "moral compass" and a core value of "openness" that is based on "always trying to do the right thing."

It handles about $190 billion per day in business for its clients, according to the order.

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Associated Press writers Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Ireland, and Tom Hays in New York City contributed to this report.