Dozens of Bodies Found in Town Outside #Damascus. The dead included 8 members of a single family, including 3 childrenhttp://nyti.ms/PQ7jWm
The New York Times 
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Dozens of bodies were found Saturday in a town outside Damascus that has been the focus of what activists described as a scorched-earth campaign by Syrian troops aiming to wipe out rebels and their sympathizers in several suburbs of the capital.
Hussein Malla/Associated Press
Hussein Ali Omar, one of 11 Lebanese pilgrims held for months by rebels in Syria, with his mother near Beirut after his release.
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Forty to 50 bodies were found in the town of Daraya, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a network of activists inside Syria. The town had already sustained heavy shelling, and bodies have been turning up there for days in the wake of army raids, leading activists to count more than 100 dead since Wednesday.
Most of the victims were found on Saturday in the basement of one building, activists said, and according to activists with the Daraya Coordination Committee, the dead included eight members of a single family, including three children and their mother.
The cause of death, and the total number of people killed, could not be determined. Some activists put the death toll at more than 70 and said the victims had been shot execution style. But with so much shelling in recent days, it is difficult to independently verify how the people died.
In a video that activists posted Saturday, which they said showed the dead, many of the corpses appeared to have been burned, suggesting that they might have died in shelling possibly days ago.
Still, the violence in Daraya fit with a pattern of deaths that has begun to emerge after raids by government forces in several suburbs of Damascus. Over the past week, activists repeatedly reported that Syrian soldiers have invaded towns where rebels had control, only to leave bodies behind. In most cases, according to photos and video from activists, the victims have been young men who appear to have been shot in the head, but there have also been cases in which victims appeared to have been killed by shelling.
According to the Observatory’s tally, August has been among the most deadly months of the 17-month-old conflict, and Daraya seems to have suffered an especially brutal campaign. Activists said the town held an important rebel armory, and a warehouse full of food — which appear to have alarmed the Syrian troops, causing them to blame the entire community for what they see as supporting the opposition.
The government, in statements through its state news agencies, did not specifically mention Daraya on Saturday, but its usual explanation for raids involves what it describes as efforts to “clean” communities of “terrorists” — its most common label for insurgents and their supporters.
Experts have said extrajudicial killings are a particularly Syrian brand of counterinsurgency, in which fear is the dominant tool.
Fighting continued Saturday in Aleppo, but the war’s reach into Lebanon appeared to be receding, at least for now. Rebels also suspect the government hopes that the population will eventually tire of the conflict and turn against the rebels, blaming them for setting up in communities and putting noncombatants in danger.
On Saturday, a Shiite family that had abducted dozens of Syrians inside Lebanon said Saturday that it would let all but a few of the captives go, and Syrian rebels released one of 11 Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in May.
It was not clear if the releases were connected, but they both brought calm to a crisis that had seemed destined to escalate.
North of Beirut, in Tripoli, a cease-fire also seemed to hold after five days of extended gun battles between Lebanese Sunnis and Alawites loyal to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
Maher al Mikdad, the spokesman for the family that kidnapped more than 30 Syrians in retaliation for the abduction of a relative earlier this month in Syria, told reporters that his family let most of the captives go “as a good-will gesture.”
He said that in order to press for the release of his relative, Hassan al Mikdad, the Mikdad clan would hold onto four Syrians who he said are members of the Free Syrian Army, the main group of rebel fighters in Syria, and a Turkish man who was also kidnapped.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
