Fears for 250 lives in Damascus

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.

The reports came as President Bashar Assad’s forces pressed on with a major offensive against rebels closing in on parts of the Syrian capital, and while government troops moved to encircle the contested town of Qusair, near the Lebanese border.