Beirut: Air strikes pounded an insurgent-held area near Damascus on Sunday, footage broadcast by regime TV stations showed, as the Syrian regime stepped up efforts to wipe out the insurgency’s last foothold near the capital.
Thick clouds of smoke rose from the Al Hajar Al Aswad district as the sound of jets could be heard overhead in the live broadcasts from the area.
The area is part of an enclave just south of Damascus that includes the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk and is controlled by extremist militants from Daesh and the Nusra Front.
It is adjoined by a pocket held by other rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.
A family of three was killed late Saturday in a wave of regime shelling on Yarmouk. A woman, her husband, and their child were killed in the shelling, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.
“This brings to nine the number of civilians killed since the shelling escalated on Thursday,” said Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman.
Thousands of homes have been destroyed in Yarmouk in the last four days of fighting, Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman, said. “There must be safe passage for the sick and the wounded and the dying civilians,” he said. “Yarmouk has been transformed into a death camp, like one of the lower regions of hell.”
Bashar Al Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, is seeking to crush the last few besieged rebel enclaves, building on the defeat of insurgents in the eastern Ghouta region, which was the rebels’ last major stronghold near the capital.
Rebel fighters on Saturday began to withdraw from an enclave they held northeast of Damascus in the eastern Qalamoun region in a surrender agreement with the regime. They are being transported to opposition-held territory at the Turkish border.
Although the conquest of eastern Qalamoun and the enclave south of Damascus will leave just one remaining besieged rebel enclave, north of the city of Homs, large parts of Syria at the borders with Jordan, Israel, Turkey and Iraq remain outside Al Assad’s control.
Anti-Al Assad rebels hold a chunk of territory in the southwest and the northwest, and Kurdish-led militias, backed by the United States, control an expanse of northern and eastern Syria.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi military spokesman told Reuters on Sunday that an Iraqi air strike in Syria on April 19 killed 36 Daesh militants, including some of the group’s leaders in Syria. Iraqi warplanes had attacked a Daesh explosives factory and other positions inside Syria on Thursday, a rare air assault across the border.
