Syria pulled its troops from a 10-day clampdown in Daraa yesterday and deployed them in another protest hub as activists vowed a “Day of Defiance” to press their anti-regime campaign.

And as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime arrested 300 people on another front in Damascus, the UN said it was sending a team to access the situation in the southern town of Daraa.

Dozens of armoured vehicles, including tanks and troops reinforcements, were deployed meanwhile near the Mediterranean coastal town of Banias, an activist said, when contacted by telephone.

In Daraa, where the seven-week-old protest movement was born, about 350 soldiers in armoured personnel carriers and trucks plastered with portraits of Mr Assad drove out of the town at around 10 a.m.

“We have begun our withdrawal after having completed our mission in Daraa,” said General Riad Haddad, the military’s political department chief. Dozens of people were killed during military assaults in Daraa, launched with what activists termed “indiscriminate” shelling of the town.