The Syrian army and rebel groups engaged in fierce battles early on Sunday on a critical front in eastern Ghouta where government advances have in effect splintered the insurgent enclave into three, a war monitor said. It said there was intense fighting on several fronts accompanied by a government artillery barrage, continuous air raids and attacks by helicopters. Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam, the two largest rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, have vowed to resist the army’s offensive, but they have lost more than half the enclave’s area in two weeks of ground fighting. Defeat in eastern Ghouta would deliver the rebels their biggest blow since December 2016, when a government offensive drove them from Aleppo, their largest urban stronghold. Rebel groups hold large areas of the northwest and southwest, while northeastern Syria is in the hands of Kurdish fighters and allied militias.

Source: Egypt Independent March 11, 2018 09:45 UTC