DAMASCUS: Several hundred bodies have been found in a town near Damascus after a ferocious assault by the Syrian army, a watchdog said on Sunday, as activists accused government forces of another gruesome "massacre."
A grisly video issued by opposition militants showed bodies lined wall-to-wall in a mosque complex in Daraya after a massive offensive by troops battling to crush insurgents who have regrouped in the outskirts of the capital.
At least 320 corpses were found on Saturday and Sunday, the victims of a five-day onslaught on rebel fighters in Daraya, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists on the ground in Syria, described it as a "massacre" by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and said people in Daraya had been summarily executed and their bodies burnt.
"Shabiha (pro-regime) militias... have turned into generic killing machines," it charged, also showing a video of victims being buried in mass graves.
Human rights groups have accused the regime of committing many atrocities since the uprising against Assad's government first erupted in March last year, and a UN panel said earlier this month it was guilty of crimes against humanity.
Militants posted a video on YouTube entitled "Massacre at the Abu Sleiman Addarani Mosque in Daraya" showing dozens of bodies lined up in dimly lit rooms.
"An odious massacre committed by the gangs of the Assad regime in the Abu Sleiman Addarani Mosque. More than 150 innocent martyrs fell in a brutal campaign by the criminal gangs against the city," said the commentary with the video, whose authenticity could not be verified.
State television said Daraya, a mainly Sunni Muslim town of some 200,000 people, was being "purified of terrorist remnants."
At least 183 people were killed nationwide on Saturday, the Observatory said, as the brutal conflict that has convulsed Syria for 17 months showed no signs of abating.
The army claimed to have retaken most of Damascus in late July, after about two weeks of intense fighting across the capital's southern belt. Most rebel Free Syrian Army fighters were forced out into the nearby countryside, but have since resumed hit-and-run operations, according to activists.
"Our valiant armed forces cleared the town of Daraya of the remnants of armed terrorist groups which committed crimes that traumatised the citizens of the town and destroyed public and private property," the government newspaper Ath-Thawra said.
Assad's Alawite-led regime insists it is fighting foreign "terrorists" aided by its Sunni Muslim rivals in the region and the West.
Activists described the Daraya offensive as a bid to crush "once and for all" the insurgency in Damascus after rebel fighters regrouped to the southern outskirts following an army offensive in the heart of the city last month.
"The criminal regime imposed a blockade and cut off necessary supplies to the town, then subjected it to indiscriminate shelling with heavy weapons and warplanes," the LCC said.
"Afterwards the gangs of killers entered the town and carried out summary executions, before dismembering and setting fire to the bodies."
Reports by activists cannot be independently confirmed because of severe restrictions on media operating in Syria.
The Observatory also reported shelling or air strikes in several other parts of the country on Sunday including the battered northern city of Aleppo and in Daraa in the far south, the cradle of the uprising.
A report by UN investigators this month said government forces and their militia allies had committed crimes against humanity and that rebels had also carried out war crimes, although on a lesser scale.
In particular, it held government forces responsible for a massacre in the central town of Houla in May when 108 civilians, including 49 children, were killed in an atrocity that shocked the world.
August is already the deadliest single month of the conflict with at least 4,000 people killed, according to the Observatory, while around 25,000 have died since March 2011.
The United Nations puts the death toll at more than 17,000 and has warned of a major humanitarian crisis with over 200,000 refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries and 2.5 million in need inside Syria.
New international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who takes over from Kofi Annan next month, said on Friday he was "scared" of the enormity of the task he faces to try to end the increasingly ferocious conflict.
Syria warned Brahimi on Sunday not to follow the same path as Annan, with Ath-Thawra accusing the former UN chief of "bowing to US and Western pressure."
"For Brahimi's mission to succeed and so that Annan's experience is not repeated, the envoy must respect the rules approved by Damascus," Ath-Thawra said.
Damascus said last week it would coooperate with Brahimi to try to pave the way for "national dialogue," while also suggesting it was ready to discuss Assad's exit as part of any negotiated solution.
Meanwhile, the head of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy commission Aladin Borujerdi was meeting Assad on Sunday, state media said.
Tehran -- the regime's staunchest ally -- has said it will submit a plan for ending the conflict to a Non-Aligned Movement summit it is hosting on Thursday and Friday.
Tehran's initiative comes as its foes in the West seek to ramp up the pressure on Damascus, with Washington and London threatening action if it uses its chemical weapons and Paris voicing support for a partial no-fly zone.
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