Soldiers demanding information about Adnan Bakkour, who resigned to protest a violent government crackdown on dissent, fanned out in villages near the Turkish border and in central Syria, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the activist network The Local Coordination Committees.

Bakkour’s whereabouts remained unclear. The former attorney general for central Hama province appeared in two videos last week declaring his resignation, but authorities said “terrorists” had kidnapped him and forced him to make the recording.

Bakkour denied the government claim in one of the videos.

His defection appeared to be the highest level so far in the five-month Syrian uprising.

In an audio message posted online over the past day, a man who identified himself as Bakkour said that security forces and pro-regime thugs had attacked his convoy Friday in the Maaret Hirmeh area in Idlib province, killing four people accompanying him and wounding three others.

“I myself was lightly wounded because of shrapnel,” he said in the audio recording, adding he was able to escape with the help of other dissidents.

Syria has banned foreign journalists and restricted local media. Activist accounts and amateur videos posted online are vital sources of information, but it is nearly impossible to independently verify the reports.

The UN estimates some 2,200 people have been killed since March as protesters take to the streets every week, despite the near-certainty that they will face a barrage of bullets and sniper fire by security forces.

The regime blames the unrest on thugs and armed gangs and claims security forces are the real victims.

Idilbi, the LCC spokesman, confirmed the attack in Maaret Hirmeh Friday, saying a high-ranking leader of the protest movement from the rebellious city of Hama died in the attack on Bakkour.

He said Bakkour was now “safely out of the country” but that troops were still conducting raids and arrests in the Hama countryside and Idlib province in search for him.

He declined to say where Bakkour was, or how he knew he was now out of Syria. Other unconfirmed reports by activists said he had made it to Turkey or Cyprus.

Also Monday, Idilbi said there were unconfirmed reports of gunfire heard from Mazzeh military airport in Damascus, where many detainees were being held. Idilbi said there were reports the gunfire was due to clashes between the military and soldiers who have defected, but said those could not be immediately confirmed.

A military official denied as “absolutely baseless” that any troops had defected and said there was nothing unusual at Mazzeh airport.

There have been credible reports of scattered, mostly low-level army defections, although it is difficult to gauge how widespread they are. Assad, and his father who ruled before him, stacked key military posts in the overwhelmingly Sunni country with members of their minority Alawite sect, melding the fate of the army and the regime.

Elsewhere, troops stormed the flashpoint Khaldieh district in central Homs province Monday, killing two people, according to the LCC and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another man was killed in the western town of Talkalakh during security operations there, they said.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, was scheduled to meet with Assad on Monday to address issues including caring for the wounded and access to detainees.

The government also said there would be dialogue sessions Monday in Syrian provinces to help ease the crisis, but opposition figures say there can be no talk of reconciliation while the government shoots protesters.