Syrian forces struck back against rebels today with attack helicopters and shelling in Damascus, one day after an audacious rebel attack in the capital killed three leaders of the regime.

Syrian government forces are shelling a number of neighbourhoods in and around the capital Damascus, anti-regime activists say, a day after a bomb killed three members of president Bashar Assad’s inner circle.

Rebels penetrated the heart of Syria's power elite, detonating a bomb inside a crisis meeting in Damascus that killed three leaders of the regime, including President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law and the Defence Minister Dawoud Rajha.

A DOZEN gunmen killed in a shootout with Afghan soldiers were Pakistani members of al-Qaida who had escaped from intelligence service detention in Kabul just hours earlier, the Afghan foreign minister reported yesterday.