Rocket attack on Syrian capital kills 35
BEIRUT — Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighborhood of Damascus on Tuesday killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others, Syrian staterun media said, marking one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.
The government blamed rebels in the eastern suburbs of Damascus for the attack on the Kashkol neighborhood. The capital, seat of President Bashar Assad’s power, has come under increasing attack as government forces continue to pound rebel-held eastern Ghouta, with military backing from Russia.
With government forces tied up in the monthlong offensive on eastern Ghouta, Islamic State militants seized a neighborhood on its southern edge, forcing the government to rush in reinforcements.
IS militants captured the neighborhood of Qadam late Monday, a week after rebels had surrendered it to the government. At least 36 soldiers and progovernment militiamen were killed in the clashes, according to the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said dozens more were captured or wounded.
Last year, the Islamic State group lost the swath of territory it had controlled in eastern Syria since 2014 — and where it had proclaimed its selfstyled “caliphate” — but it retains pockets of control in areas across Syria, including two neighborhoods on the southern edge of Damascus.
On Monday, the militants pounced on Qadam from the neighboring Hajr al-Aswad and Yarmouk neighborhoods, which they control. More than 1,000 rebels and their families had earlier fled Qadam for rebel-held territory in the north of the country, instead of submitting to the Damascus authorities.
There was no comment from the Syrian government following the IS seizure of Qadam.
The government’s assault on eastern Ghouta has displaced 45,000 people, the United Nations said Tuesday, while tens of thousands more are living in desperate conditions in northern Syria, where a Turkish military campaign is underway.