Syrian jets bombed the suburbs of Damascus and a car bomb killed 10 people in the capital yesterday, the last day of a four-day truce which UN chief Ban Ki-moon acknowledged had failed.

Each side blamed the other for breaching the Eid al Adha truce arranged by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who nevertheless promised to pursue his peace efforts.

"I am deeply disappointed that the parties failed to respect the call to suspend fighting," Mr Ban said in Seoul, where he was visiting to receive the Seoul Peace Prize.

"This crisis cannot be solved with more weapons and bloodshed... the guns must fall silent," he said.

Mr Brahimi, after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, voiced regret that the ceasefire had not worked better. Asked whether UN peacekeepers might be sent to Syria, he said there was no immediate plan for that.

Although President Bashar al Assad's government and several rebel groups accepted the plan to stop shooting over the Muslim religious holiday, it failed to stem the bloodshed in a 19-month-old conflict that has already cost at least 32,000 lives.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition watchdog, 420 people have been killed since Friday.

Syrian state television said women and children were among those killed by a "terrorist car bomb".