'Intense' strikes pound east Damascus after rebel assault

Syrian regime forces drove back a surprise rebel assault by nightfall on Sunday and began a fierce bombing campaign on Monday morning.

DAMASCUS // Syrian government forces regained ground against rebels in the capital on Monday amid intense air strikes and heavy fighting, a day after being caught out in a surprise attack.

Rebels and allied extremist militant groups, led by former the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, initially scored gains after attacking government positions in east Damascus early on Sunday. But forces loyal to president Bashar Al Assad had pushed them back by nightfall and began a fierce bombing campaign on Monday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“There have been intense air strikes since dawn on opposition-held positions in Jobar from which the offensive was launched,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based war monitor.

Control of the district, which has been a battleground for more than two years and is the closest rebel position to the heart of Damascus, is divided between rebels and extremists on one side and government forces on the other.

On Monday, regime forces were locked in fighting with rebels in an industrial zone between Jobar and Qabun, a besieged, opposition-held district to the north.

“In their assault yesterday, rebels were able to open a road for several hours between Qabun and Jobar, but the area is now a front line and they can no longer cross between the two,” Mr Abdel Rahman said.

A Syrian military source said the army had recaptured “most of the positions” where rebels advanced on Sunday.

“The army foiled the armed groups’ plan to link the Jobar district with Qabun,” the source said.

Mr Abdel Rahman said the fighting had killed at least 26 members of regime forces and 21 rebels, while the toll from Monday’s air strikes was not yet known.

According to a rebel commander, the attack in Jobar was launched to relieve military pressure after rebels lost ground in nearby Qabun and Barza.

The Syrian army, supported by Russian, Iranian and Shiite militia forces, have put Syria’s rebels on the back foot with a steady succession of military victories across the country over the past 18 months, including around Damascus.

The rebels still hold a large, heavily populated enclave in the Eastern Ghouta district of farms and towns to the east of the capital, as well as some Damascus districts in the south, east and north-east of the city.

The most recent fighting has focused on the areas around Qabun and Barza, which the army has isolated from the rest of the main rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta and the eastern districts of Damascus.

The attack on Sunday was the most significant rebel incursion inside the capital in several years, and came just ahead of a new round of peace talks opening in Geneva on Thursday.

The Syrian government’s chief negotiator, Bashar Al Jaafari said the attack was “an attempt to apply political pressure on the Syrian government before it heads to Geneva”.

Several rounds of peace talks so far have failed to bring about a solution to Syria’s war, which entered its seventh year last week.

* Agence France-Presse and Reuters