Syrian forces have cleared "terrorist" fighters from the town of Haffeh, state television has said.
This comes after a week of heavy fighting which led the US to warn of a potential massacre.
Syrian television said the forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had restored calm and security in Haffeh after they "cleansed it of armed terrorist groups", a term authorities use to describe rebels fighting President Assad.
The rebels said on Tuesday they had withdrawn from Haffeh, under pressure of heavy bombardment.
Meanwhile, the United States is worried that Russia may be sending Syria attack helicopters.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US views Russian claims that its arms transfers to Syria are unrelated to the conflict there as "patently untrue".
The comments came as the Pentagon found itself on the defensive for doing business with Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, given concerns in Congress about the firm's role in arming the Syrian regime.
The 15-month-old conflict in Syria has grown into a full-scale civil war, the UN peacekeeping chief said yesterday.
Many hundreds of people, including civilians, rebels and members of President Bashar al-Assad's army and security forces have been killed since a ceasefire deal brokered two months ago was meant to halt the bloodshed.
"We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria.'' Mrs Clinton said.
''They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn't worry - everything they are shipping is unrelated to their (the Syrian government's) actions internally," she said, addressing a forum in Washington.
"That's patently untrue."
Mrs Clinton did not offer any details about the source of her information about Russia's possible shipment of attack helicopters to Syria.
She said: "We are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria."
She said such a sale "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters that Mrs Clinton was concerned about helicopters now en route to Syria and not about possible past sales of Russian-origin attack helicopters to Syria.
She said that she could not elaborate or speculate on the source of Mrs Clinton's information.
Russia and China are Mr Assad's main defenders on the diplomatic front.
As permanent members of the UN Security Council with the power to veto resolutions, the two have stymied efforts by Western powers to condemn or call for his removal.
The United Nations says Mr Assad's forces have killed more than 10,000 people since the uprising against his family's four-decade rule of Syria broke out in March 2011.
The Syrian government's use of Russian-made arms has thrown a spotlight on the Pentagon's purchase of Russian helicopters for the Afghan military, which the US is building up so that it can take over security as US troops withdraw.
This week, US Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defence Secretary Leon Panetta branding Russian export firm Rosoboronexport "an enabler of mass murder in Syria."
"I remain deeply troubled that the (Pentagon) would knowingly do business with a firm that has enabled mass atrocities," Mr Cornyn wrote. "Such actions by Rosoboronexport warrant the renewal of US sanctions against it, not a billion-dollar contract."
A Cornyn aide told Reuters the senator put a hold on the nomination of Heidi Shyu to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, as a way to pressure the Pentagon over the matter.
However, the Pentagon said dealing with Rosoboronexport was the only legal way to supply the helicopters to Afghanistan and attempted to differentiate between the two conflicts.
"We understand the concerns. We're not ignoring them," said Pentagon spokesman George Little.
"But I would make the point that, in the case of Afghanistan, the Mi-17 is about giving them what they need and what they can use effectively to take on their own fights inside their own country," he added.
Reports from Syria cannot be independently verified as state authorities have barred international journalists and rights groups.
