Last Friday, when an Internet blackout in Myanmar made it even harder to estimate the brutality of the crackdown there, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said his government believed that “the loss of life is far greater than is being reported.” The Burmese military junta said that nine people were killed in the unrest. Now comes an unconfirmed report in The Daily Mail in Britain with a staggering claim of mass slaughter. The paper quotes Hla Win, described as a Burmese general who has deserted his post in protest of the regime’s harsh tactics.

“Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about,” Hla Win said. “The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Here is some additional detail from General Win, referred to in this passage by his title: The 42-year-old chief of military intelligence in Rangoon’s northern region added: “I decided to desert when I was ordered to raid two monasteries and force several hundred monks onto trucks. “They were to be killed and their bodies dumped deep inside the jungle. I refused to participate in this.”

The General is seeking political asylum in Norway, according to The Norway Post. A Norwegian freelance journalist told The Post that he met with General Win in a jungle hideout near the border with Thailand.

Norway has deep ties to the opposition movement in Myanmar, formerly called Burma, through the Democratic Voice of Burma, which runs a robust news operation out of Oslo. So far, it has posted no English-language reports of Win’s reported defection, but it referred to him in an earlier piece as a “local commander” in Yangon.

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