In a brazen daylight kidnapping, gunmen snatched a bus filled with 48 Iranian pilgrims from a Damascus suburb as they headed to visit a shrine holy Shiites, reported Iranian state television on Saturday.

Just a few miles away in the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital, regime forces pounded the neighborhood of Tadamon, one of the last rebel-held areas in the city and began to move into the neighborhood.

The abduction was the largest single kidnapping of Iranians in Syria, where several smaller groups of Iranians have been snatched in recent months.

The pilgrims had just left their hotel on Saturday and were headed by bus to the Sayeda Zeinab mosque, a holy shrine for Shiite Muslims in a suburb south of the capital, when they were taken, Iran's Arabic language, state-owned TV station al-Alam said, citing an official at the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

The state news agency, in a conflicting report, said they were headed to the airport when they were taken. The report added that the location where they were being held was "known," without giving any further details.