Syria renews push on besieged areas
BEIRUT: The Syrian army began an intense bombardment of a rebel enclave near Homs yesterday, a war monitor said, as President Bashar alAssad pushed to recapture all the areas his forces have besieged.
The attack comes as Syrian state television broadcast footage of work to clear roads into a pocket in south Damascus where fighting had raged, to allow some rebels there to withdraw in a surrender deal, it said.
Yesterday, the Syrian army said missiles had struck bases in northern Syria, describing it as a ‘‘new aggression’’ by its enemies. A Syria war monitor ing group said the attack killed 26 progovernment fighters, mostly Iranians.
Iranian media gave conflicting reports about the incident amid speculation it was carried out by neighbouring Israel.
Israel’s military, which has used air strikes before in Syria to target a growing Iranian presence, said it did not comment on such reports.
The Syrian army’s assault on the pocket between Homs and Hama — the most populous remaining besieged area in Syria — included both air strikes and artillery, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the war monitor.
The bombardment targeted Rastan, the biggest town in the pocket, and nearby villages, the Observatory said.
Syrian rebels hold large swathes of both northwest and southwest Syria. An alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the United States holds large parts of northern and eastern Syria after an offensive against Islamic State last year.
Syrian troops have tightened the noose around a Palestinian refugee camp held by Islamic State militants in southern Damascus where hundreds of civilians face an uncertain future, state media, witnesses and residents said.
Nearly two weeks into a campaign that has left much of the onceteeming Yarmouk camp in ruins, state media said the alQadam neighbourhood next to the camp was retaken.
Opposition sources said the army was engaged in fierce fighting with militants on the outskirts of Yarmouk camp where an estimated 1500 to 2000 militants are encircled.
The camp, under siege by the army since rebels captured it in 2012, was home to some 160,000 Palestinians before the Syrian conflict began in 2011. They were refugees from the 1948 ArabIsraeli war and their descendants. — Reuters