Assad’s army, ISIS wage fierce battle in S. Damascus
Lavrov: Russia, Turkey, Iran need to clear Syria of ‘terrorists’ • Cavusoglu: United Nations should help restore governance
BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Syrian Army and its allies engaged in a fierce battle on Saturday with Islamic State fighters in an enclave south of Damascus held by the jihadist group.
Reuters witnesses, a war monitor and state television reported intense fighting including artillery bombardment and small arms fire.
The army had made broad advances, said state television. The monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it had gained control of several buildings in the densely built-up area.
Footage on state TV showed tanks rolling across an open area of fields to the edge of the enclave, which includes parts of al-Qadam district, al-Hajar al-Aswad and the Yarmuk Palestinian camp.
It showed uniformed soldiers moving through battered streets with dense clouds of black smoke overhead, while the whizz and crash of artillery fire, the rattle of small arms fire and deep echoing blasts could all be heard.
President Bashar Assad this month defeated rebels in their biggest stronghold near Damascus in eastern Ghouta, and has since then focused on ending resistance in several smaller pockets near the Syrian capital.
Islamic State lost most of its territory in Syria last year in the face of two rapid offensives, one by the Syrian Army backed by Russia and Iran, and the other by an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the United States.
It has held onto some areas of desert in eastern Syria, as well as to the pocket in south Damascus and one other area by the borders with Jordan and Israel that is held by a group that has pledged allegiance to it.
Russia’s entry into the war in 2015 has propelled Assad to a succession of victories that have dashed any rebel hopes of ousting him militarily, but rebel groups still hold large swaths of northwest and southwest Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday after meeting in Moscow with his counterparts from Turkey and Iran that the three countries need to help Syria’s government clear its country of terrorists.
Declarations of some Syrian opposition figures were damaging efforts to inject new life into the Geneva peace process, Lavrov added, saying there could be no preconditions for the talks.
He said that he and his Iranian and Turkish counterparts agreed that the peace process must continue despite Western missile strikes.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu meanwhile said the three countries needed to work with the United Nations to ensure the legitimacy of any political solution in Syria, as any military solution would be illegal and unsustainable. The three countries could work together to help the Syrian people and there needed to be a new push to reach a political solution, he added.
Speaking in a joint news conference with his Russian and Iranian counterparts, Cavusoglu also said the Kurdish YPG militia in the northern Syrian city of Manbij poses a threat to the territorial integrity of Syria as well as of nearby Turkey.