Rebels and local residents reported opposition forces conducted mortar and rocket strikes against the base from Darayya.

Witnesses said that after the FSA fighters left the city, soldiers accompanied by "shabiha militia" members stormed in, raiding homes and arresting many, taking prisoners to the basements of empty buildings where they were shot execution-style, according to opposition accounts.

[17] The offensive against the town reportedly started with the military first surrounding Darayya, thus preventing civilians from escaping, then followed by several days of shelling and ending with house-to-house searches which resulted in executions.

[18]An opposition activist said that the army returned to some Darayya neighborhoods on 27 August and raided them, leading to the deaths of additional residents.

[17] A shopkeeper in the city said that "We found more than 100 dead bodies in the Abu Suleiman Derane mosque and gathered around 200 from homes and the streets to bury them in a mass grave today because the town’s graveyard is already full, the regime killed whole families from Darayya to punish us," he added.

[4] In February 2013, the UN Commission of Inquiry found “reasonable grounds to believe that Government forces perpetrated the war crime of murder against hors de combat fighters and civilians taking no active part in hostilities, including women and children” during the August 2012 massacre, but the full range of crimes perpetrated during the attack has yet to be fully investigated.

[citation needed] An investigation by the Syrian British Consortium group in 2022 found that the regime forces had killed at least 700 people,[19] including 63 children.

[21] Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate (SAFI) officer Qahtan Khalil later became widely known as the "Butcher of Darayya" for his leadership role in the massacre.