Syria Forces Ready For Assault On Rebel Enclave

Beirut, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Feb, 2018 ) :Syrian forces readied Sunday for a ground offensive against the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus, a monitor said, as residents of the capital braced for retaliatory shelling.

President Bashar al-Assad has in recent days been sending reinforcements from across the country to the edge of Eastern Ghouta, besieged by regime troops since 2013. "The reinforcements are complete; the attack is just waiting for a green light," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

On Sunday dozens of rockets and artillery slammed into three key towns in Eastern Ghouta, he told AFP. The last rebel bastion near Damascus, Eastern Ghouta is held by two main Islamist factions, Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman, although jihadists also have a foothold there.

The regime is keen to regain control of the area to halt the deadly salvo of rockets and mortars that those factions have fired on the capital. An AFP correspondent in Damascus said residents were already starting to pack bags and rent rooms outside of Damascus in anticipation of an operation now seen as imminent.

One of them said he was planning to temporarily move his parents out of their home in the capital's east, which is regularly hit in rebel shelling. "I'd rather drop my parents off in our village in Wadih al-Qalaa," in the government-controlled province of Latakia, said 29-year-old Karim.

"They'll be safer there, and I can bring them back as soon as it's calm in their neighbourhood," he told AFP.