'Scores of bodies' found in Syria

Violence has raged in the Syrian uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad, with anti-government activists accusing Assad's forces of having committed a massacre in a town close to the capital recently retaken by the army.

The opposition activists said on Saturday that more than 200 bodies had been found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the southwest of Damascus.

The activists say many of the victims in the town of Darayya had been "summarily executed".

According to unconfirmed reports, 200 bodies were discovered in houses and basement shelters.

Without commenting on the activists' claim, Syrian state TV said Darayya was being "cleansed of terrorist remnants".

The rebels said that the army had killed the people "execution-style" in house-to-house raids.

Anti-government activists said that many of the bodies showed evidence of having been shot by snipers, while others appeared to have been shot at close range.

Local activists say the type of mass killing reportedly carried out in Darayya, with dozens of bodies being discovered following government raids, has increased in recent months.

Human Rights Watch said this is not a new pattern, but is now happening in more areas and in greater numbers.

UN investigators said in a report this month that both sides in the conflict had performed summary executions - a war crime - but that Assad's troops and militia loyal to the president had committed many more offences than the rebels.

The Local Coordination Committees (LCC), an umbrella group of grassroots anti-government activist organisations, said that more than 400 people had been killed in violence across Syria on Saturday, primarily in Damascus and its environs.

It also reported deaths in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Deraa, Hama and Homs provinces.

Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road shelled the southern neighbourhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into Saturday night and fighting raged in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, residents said.

The Syrian army retook Daraya, one of many towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday, after three days of heavy bombardment, opposition activists said.

In a separate development, the head of the UN mission to Syria left the country after the mission had been wound up.

Senegalese Lt Gen Babacar Gaye joined a UN convoy to Lebanon on Saturday.

Last week, the UN decided against extending the mission, which was originally part of a six-point peace plan for Syria.

However, the ceasefire mandated by the plan never took hold and rising violence forced the UN monitors to be confined to their hotels since June.

The UN estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad's government began in March 2011.

The conflict, which began as a series of peaceful protests, has turned into an armed rebellion that has forced more than 200,000 Syrians to flee the violence, and resulted in spillover into neighbouring countries.