Syrian government troops have captured a fiercely contested suburb of the capital Damascus.

Syria’s air defence chief was killed during an offensive by president Bashar al-Assad’s forces against rebels east of Damascus, Islamist rebels and a monitoring group said.

The head of Syria’s air defences has been killed in clashes near the capital, Damascus, one of a few high-ranking military officers to be killed in the country’s civil war.

A suicide vehicle bombing of an army checkpoint outside Damascus has killed 16 soldiers, Syrian activists say.

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.