The discrepancy could be immediately ignored

Yesterday:

"The discrepancy could not immediately be explained"
[Greyhawk]
That headline is an interesting observation from within this Associated Press report:

The Syrian government statement said eight people were killed, including a man and his four children and a woman. However, local officials said seven men were killed and two other people were wounded, including a woman among the injured.

Families buried loved ones Monday who they said were killed during the attack. During the funerals, angry residents shouted anti-American slogans and carried banners reading: "Down with Bush and the American enemy."

An Associated Press journalist at the funerals in the village's cemetery saw the bodies of seven men -- none of them children. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

Gosh, I know I'm sure stumped. Anybody got any ideas?

And if this story stays "hot" will that eyewitness detail be forgotten?

CNN's Nic Robertson doesn't seem shy when questioning Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed Mouallem about the attack...

...but if he was aware of "the discrepency" he chose not to seek clarity.

And the report from CNN's Situation Room didn't point out the eyewitness account of the funerals either:

However, the Syrian foreign minister says witnesses saw four U.S. helicopters arrive at a farm five miles inside Syria, that two landed and American forces emerged and opened fire, killing at least seven civilians.

WALEED MOALLEM [Syrian Foreign Minister]: They killed four of one family, the father and three children. They killed the guard of the farm and his wife. They killed also a fisherman who was fishing from the Euphrates River outside the farm.

Fox News (Special Report With Brit Hume) blew a chance for some good journalism, too:

GRIFFIN: But the Syrians say the U.S. raid targeted civilians.

IMAD MOUSTAPHA [Syrian Ambassador to U.S.]: We characterize it as an act of sheer terrorism.

GRIFFIN: These are the first pictures released from Syria’s official news agency of those killed in the U.S. raid. The names of the dead: Dahud Mohammed al-Abdullah (ph), his four sons, and Ahmed Khalifeh Ali Abbas al-Hassan (ph) and his wife.

MOUSTAPHA: None of them were al Qaeda operatives. They were ordinary Syrian citizens.

GRIFFIN: Will this raid jeopardize thawing relations between Syria and its neighbors? The Syrian foreign minister, on a visit to London, told Fox his country was shocked by the U.S. raid.

Lets review that AP report again: "An Associated Press journalist at the funerals in the village's cemetery saw the bodies of seven men -- none of them children. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained." Note that's an Associated Press journalist - not a U.S. government/DoD spokesperson - countering the Syrian claim.

Meanwhile, in today's news:

A raid into Syria on Sunday was carried out by American Special Operations forces who killed an Iraqi militant responsible for running weapons, money and foreign fighters across the border into Iraq, American officials said Monday.
<...>
American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the raid said the mission had been mounted rapidly over the weekend on orders from the Central Intelligence Agency when the location of the man suspected of leading an insurgent cell, an Iraqi known as Abu Ghadiya, was confirmed. About two dozen American commandos in specially equipped Black Hawk helicopters swooped into the village of Sukkariyah, six miles from the Iraqi border, just before 5 p.m., and fought a brief gun battle with Abu Ghadiya and several members of his cell, the officials said.

It was unclear whether Abu Ghadiya died near his tent on the battlefield or after he was taken into American custody, one senior American official said.

One United States official described Abu Ghadiya as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s “most prominent” smuggler of foreign operatives crossing the Syrian border into Iraq, and in February the Treasury Department named him as one of four major figures in that group living in Syria.