Syrian troops have freed three journalists who were seized last week by rebels while covering violence in a suburb of Damascus, state-run TV said today.

A bomb ripped through the third floor of the state TV building in Damascus today, damaging several offices and wounding at least three employees, Syrian TV said.

Syrian TV has said that the country’s national security chief has died of wounds suffered in a rebel blast.

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.

Syrian forces killed at least 200 people and wounded hundreds in a deadly barrage of shelling early today, in an offensive that appears to be the bloodiest episode in the nearly 11-month-old uprising, activists said.

Dozens of people have been killed and wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Damascus, Syrian state TV said today.

Four people were killed when Syrian army troops backed by tanks and three helicopters took a prominent mosque that had been controlled by residents in a besieged southern city today, a witness said.

Military reinforcements poured into the besieged southern Syrian town of Daraa today, a day after President Bashar Assad unleashed deadly force to crush a months-old revolt, killing at least 65 people.

Six people were killed and two others injured when a rain-sodden wall collapsed on them in the Syrian port city of Tartous, Syrian TV reported.