Syrian govt gains in Ghouta, Turkey steps up Afrin attack

Residents flee Eastern Ghouta bombardment

FE Team | Published: March 05, 2018 00:23:21

Damascus, Mar 04 (Reuters): Syrian government forces gained more ground in an assault on eastern Ghouta near Damascus on Saturday as they seek to defeat the last major rebel enclave near the capital, a war monitor and a news service run by Lebanon's Hezbollah said.
On another front in the multi-sided war, Turkey said it had captured a Kurdish town in the northwestern Afrin region where it has been fighting the Kurdish YPG militia since January, helped by allied Syrian fighters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Turkish campaign was gathering pace, and Turkish jets hit pro-government forces for the third time in 48 hours in the area, killing 36 of them. The pro-government forces are allied to the YPG.
The Syrian war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people since 2011, has escalated on several fronts this year as the collapse of Islamic State has given way to other conflicts between Syrian and international parties.
The UN Security Council demanded a 30-day countrywide ceasefire a week ago, but this has failed to take effect.
Damascus, backed by Russia and Iran, has been waging one of the deadliest offensives of the war in eastern Ghouta, killing hundreds of people in a fierce air and artillery bombardment over the last two weeks.
Ground forces including the army's elite Tiger Force have been attacking from the eastern edge of the besieged enclave, where the United Nations says 400,000 people live.
The Observatory said they had taken almost complete control of the town of al-Shayfouniya on Saturday.
The Jaish al-Islam rebel group said in a statement its fighters had withdrawn from positions in two areas, one of them in al-Shayfouniya, due to intense bombardment. It accused Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Russia of waging a"scorched earth" campaign. The military news service run by Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese group that fights on Assad's side, named three other areas it said the Syrian army had captured at the eastern and southeastern rim of the rebel enclave.
A BBC report adds: Residents are reported to be fleeing the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave in Syria as the situation there was described as "beyond critical".
Syria's military appears to be increasing pressure on several fronts to try to retake the enclave just to the east of the capital, Damascus.