The Syrian military pounded an opposition area near the capital Damascus on Thursday, activists said, even as the UN pressed the authorities to implement its peace plan.

Tanks shelled the suburb of Douma in an operation beginning on early Thursday morning, according to Rami Abdulrahman, of the UK-based opposition group Syrian Human Rights Observatory. The use of heavy weapons was also reported in the north of the country and in the central city of Homs.

More than 40 people were killed in Thursday’s violence, Mr Abdulrahman said, including 19 soldiers. The Local Co-ordination Committees, an activist network, accused the regime of “systematically burning and bulldozing homes of revolutionaries” in the areas in which operations have been carried out.