Regime tanks and warplanes have pounded besieged Mleiha east of Damascus, pressing a campaign to take control of the opposition-held town, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
Fierce fighting raged on the outskirts of Mleiha as rebels tried to defend it, the Observatory said a day after 22 opposition fighters were killed in the army's bombardment.
According to the Britain-based monitoring group, there were four air strikes on Friday on Mleiha, which, like much of the Eastern Ghouta area east of Damascus, has been under army siege for nearly six months.
Mleiha is strategically located near regime-held Jaramana, which is frequently shelled by the rebels.
State news agency SANA said on Thursday that six children were killed in shelling on the Dikhaniyeh neighbourhood there.
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An activist on the ground, Abu Saqr, told AFP via Skype that "Assad's regime has been trying for two days to storm" Mleiha.
He claimed that the offensive "is being repelled by the (rebel) Free Syrian Army".
The army's campaign to crush rebel bastions in the Eastern Ghouta area began in March 2013, and its troops blockaded the area completely in October.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still living in Eastern Ghouta, suffering from severe food shortages in many towns and villages, as well as bearing the brunt of daily shelling.
Elsewhere, fighting resumed in Latakia in western Syria, where rebels launched a major offensive two weeks ago against several strategic positions in the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's clan and his Alawite sect.
