Syrian troops forced rebels to abandon a battered Damascus suburb on Friday, Aug. 24 in the latest battle of an intensifying civil war that the UN refugee agency said had prompted more than 200,000 people to flee the country, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of soldiers and dozens of tanks and armored vehicles pushed into the centre of Daraya after a small group of defenders withdrew, opposition activists said.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces had subjected the Sunni Muslim township to a three-day bombardment from artillery, tanks, mortars, rockets and helicopter gunships in which at least 70 people were killed, 21 of them on Friday they said.

"There are lots of bodies trapped in destroyed buildings and civilians are trying to flee towards Damascus," an activist in Daraya, who gave his name as Abu Kinan, said.

"The rebels have mostly slipped away. The fear now is that the army will round up young men and summarily execute them, like it did in Mouadamiya," he said, referring to a nearby suburb where residents said troops killed at least 40 people in cold blood this week after storming in to hunt down rebels.

Opposition sources reported a similar killing spree by Assad's forces in the Qaboun district of Damascus, where they said at least 46 people were done to death.