BEIRUT – The Arab League halted its observer mission in Syria on Saturday because of escalating violence that killed nearly 100 people the past three days, as pro-Assad forces battled dissident soldiers in a belt of suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus in the most intense fighting yet so close to the capital.

The rising bloodshed has added urgency to new attempts by Arab and Western countries to find a resolution to the 10 months of violence that according to the United Nations has killed at least 5,400 people as Assad seeks to crush persistent protests demanding an end to his rule.

The United Nations is holding talks on a new resolution on Syria and this week will discuss an Arab peace plan aimed at ending the crisis. But the initiatives face two major obstacles: Damascus’ rejection of an Arab peace plan which it says impinges on its sovereignty, and Russia’s willingness to use its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Syria from sanctions.

Syria’s Interior Minister Mohammed Shaar vowed the crackdown would go on, telling families of security members killed in the past months that security forces “will continue their struggle to clean Syria’s soil of the outlaws.”

Government forces launched a heavy assault on a string of suburbs and villages on the eastern outskirts of Damascus.

Troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers attacked the suburbs of Kfar Batna, Saqba, Jisreen and Arbeen, the closest of which lie only a few miles from downtown Damascus, said the Local Coordination Committees activist network and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Dissident troops were fighting back against the attackers, they said.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said in a statement that the organization decided to halt the observers’ work immediately because of the increasing violence, until the League’s council can meet to decide the mission’s fate.

He sharply criticized Damascus for the spike in bloodshed, saying the regime has “resorted to escalating the military option in complete violation of (its) commitments” to end the crackdown.

He said the victims of the violence have been “innocent citizens,” in an implicit rejection of Syria’s claims that it is fighting “terrorists.”