At least 100 people are reported dead after a major Syrian army offensive in the suburbs south of Damascus, say opposition groups, who are calling the attack a “massacre”.
The deaths come on the sixth day of heavy fighting outside Damacus and mark a dramatic spike in the country’s rising death toll.
State-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops had “inflicted heavy losses” on the rebels in suburbs. Video footage posted by actvists online showed dead bodies, injured people and heavy shelling, much of which is too violent to broadcast.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the names of 101 people who died, including women and children, but the organisation’s leader, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said the death toll could be as high as 250.
The coalition of Syrian opposition groups, the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, claimed that 566 people died in the attack, but neither death toll claims have been independently verified.
This is yet another reminder of the callous brutality of the Assad regime and the terrible climate of impunity inside Syria. William Hague
The latest fighting came as the Syrian army tried to break a rebel stronghold surrounding Damascus. It took place mainly in the Jdaidet Artouz and Jdaidet al-Fadel districts, around 15 kilometres (10 miles) south west of the Syrian capital.
A government official in Damascus denied the allegations and told the Associated Press that rebels were behind the “massacre” in Jdaidet al-Fadel, adding that they tried to blame government forces who entered the area after the killings occurred.
“The army discovered the massacre after entering the area,” said the official, who remained anonymous. The corpses were already decomposed, he added.
Also on Monday, Human Rights Watch called for en end to indiscriminate attacks on the Syria/Lebanon border after two civilians were killed and three more injured on 14 April.
At least 70,000 people have died in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, according to the United Nations.
Read more from Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson: Shocking Syria footage makes us stop and think
Britain and France are continuing to urge the European Union to lift its arms embargo so that rebel forces can be supplied with weapons.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said that news of the killings “underlines the urgent need to bring the conflict in Syria to an end”.
“I am appalled by the reports of the killing by Syrian government forces of dozens of people, including women and children, in the town of Jdaidet Al-Fadl, a suburb of Damascus,” he said. “This is yet another reminder of the callous brutality of the Assad regime and the terrible climate of impunity inside Syria.”
Jdaidet al-Fadel is mostly inhabited by Syrians who fled the Golan Heights after the area was captured by Israel in 1967. Jdaidet Artouz has a large Christian and Druze population.