Syria’s military said Monday it has retaken the last neighborhoods in southern Damascus held by the Islamic State group and declared the Syrian capital and its surroundings “completely safe” from militants for the first time in nearly seven years.
Reading an army statement on Syrian TV, Gen. Ali Mayhoub said the army captured the former IS strongholds in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp and Hajar al-Aswad after a monthlong campaign. He said the army operations were “concentrated and successive,” leading to the extremists’ defeat in the city.
The gains by President Bashar Assad’s troops bring greater Damascus — including the capital’s far-flung suburbs — fully under government control for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.
“Damascus and its surroundings are completely secure,” Mayhoub said.
State TV earlier said that government forces resumed an offensive at noon after a group of civilians was evacuated from the area overnight. Two hours later, the TV said troops captured IS’ former stronghold of Hajar al-Aswad and broadcast images showing troops waving the Syrian national flag in the heavily destroyed neighborhood.
A war monitoring group said some 1,600 people, including hundreds of IS gunmen, left the area on Saturday and Sunday, heading toward the desert east of the country following a deal with the government. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces are now clearing the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, a built-up residential area, of the last remaining IS fighters. It said the month of fighting…
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