Violence has raged in the Syrian uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad, with anti-regime activists accusing Assad's forces of having committed a massacre in a town close to the capital recently retaken by the army.

The opposition activists said on Saturday that more than 200 bodies had been found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the southwest of Damascus.

They said that the army had killed the people "execution-style" in house-to-house raids.

Anti-government activists said that many of the bodies showed evidence of having been shot by snipers, while others appeared to have been shot at close range.

Abu Kinan, an activist in Daraya, told Reuters news agency that he had witnessed the death of an eight-year-old girl, Asma Abu al-Laban, who was shot by army snipers while she was in a car with her parents.

Violence across country

The Local Coordination Committees (LCC), an umbrella group of grassroots anti-regime activist organizations, said that more than 400 people had been killed in violence across Syria on Saturday, primarily in Damascus and its environs.

It also reported deaths in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Deraa, Hama and Homs provinces.

Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road shelled the southern neighborhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into Saturday night and fighting raged in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, residents said.

The Syrian army retook Daraya, one of many towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday, after three days of heavy bombardment, opposition activists said.

Combat helicopters and tanks also pounded opposition-held areas of the battered northern city of Aleppo, an AFP journalist and monitors said, as the army pressed on with its war against fighters there.

Lebanese citizen released

The UN estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad's government began in March 2011.

The conflict, which began as a series of peaceful protests, has turned into an armed rebellion that has forced more than 200,000 Syrians to flee the violence, and resulted in spillover into neighboring countries.

On Saturday, a Lebanese man who had been abducted with a group of 10 other in Syria in May was released and arrived home.

He had been kidnapped by armed members of the opposition, who said his release was a "goodwill gesture".

PHOTO CAPTION

Civilians stand outside a building after it was hit by shelling from Syrian regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo August 25, 2012.

Al-Jazeera