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.
Forty to 50 bodies were found in the town ofDaraya, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group witha 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 howthe 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.

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