Beirut: For the first time in eight months, the Syrian capital, Damascus, was shelled by missiles throughout the early evening and night of Sunday-Monday, all coming from Al Ghouta, the agricultural belt surrounding the capital. At least five landed in the Old City in alleys surrounding the historical Umayyad Mosque, one of the holy sites of Islam built during the Umayyad Era.
The last time the Old City was hit and damaged was in 2013 when mortars hit the mosque itself, shattering its ancient painted windows. On Monday, one mortar smashed into a nearby restaurant in Bab Touma, the predominantly Christian district of the old city, killing eight civilians and destroying an 18th century mansion-turned-entertainment venue. Others rained on the Christian neighbourhoods of Al Qasaa from the nearby suburb of Jobar, shattering a sense of relative security and calm that residents of the Syrian capital have enjoyed since December 2015.
Back then, a joint operation by the Russian and Syrian air forces eliminated Zahran Alloush, the Saudi-backed commander of Jaysh Al Islam, the most powerful militia in the Damascus suburb.
Residents of the Syrian capital expected retaliation the very next morning but nothing came — until this July. In addition to the stream of mortars, a car bomb went off in the Kafarsuseh neighbourhood of upscale Damascus on the night of Monday, close to a major security branch and the Iranian School in Syria. It inflicted collateral damage on neighbouring buildings and wounded two passers-by.
The same day, the rebels of Wadi Barada, the valley from which the Barada River gives life to the Syrian capital, blew up a major pipeline that brings drinking water to the Syrian capital, completely cutting off the city’s water supply. The chronic water shortage topped with mortars and electricity cuts because of the hot weather threaten to bring down the sense of safety that the Damascenes have recently enjoyed, for the first time in eight months.
The three security breaches in the Syrian capital are believed to be a calculated message by the Syrian opposition, ahead of a possible new round of talks in Geneva next August. They ought to be “negotiations under fire” to extract concessions from Damascus and Moscow. Others see them as a cry for help from the militants of Al Ghouta, who are under siege while facing advancing ground troops from the Syrian Army, supported by the strong Russian air cover.
Unable to ward off the attack, they are shelling the Syrian capital indiscriminately with mortars. Similar incidents have not been recorded in months due to Russian surveillance aeroplanes preventing the rebels from opening fire on Damascus and a shaky truce that started last February, signed off by Moscow and Washington DC. These are the first operations of their kind since the Russians entered the Syrian battlefield last September.
