Snipers have fired on the UN convoy carrying a team investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but failed to deter them from their mission today.

Six days of fighting in a Damascus suburb has killed more than a hundred people and possibly many more, activists said today, in what the government also acknowledged may be a dramatic spike in the rising death toll in Syria.

Syrian rebels made a new push into Damascus today, clashing heavily with troops in the rebellious suburbs of the capital and firing mortars at a presidential palace and a Palestinian refugee camp, activists said.