Israeli-made weapons among arms handed over by militants in Damascus

BEIRUT, LEBANON (9:10 A.M.) – For the first time since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the city of Damascus is fully under the control of the Syrian military.

The long-time stronghold for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), southern Damascus was the only part of the capital that was still outside of the Syrian government’s control.

However, that would change on May 19th, as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) finally agreed to hold talks with the Islamic State in the area; this would lead to the latter’s surrender the next day.

The remaining Islamic State terrorists and their family members will now be transported to the vast Badiya area that was located between eastern Homs and western Deir Ezzor.

With ISIS gone, the Syrian Army now free up thousands of soldiers for the upcoming offensive in the southern provinces of Al-Quneitra and Dara’a.</s>BEIRUT -- Syria's military said Monday it had retaken the last neighborhoods in southern Damascus held by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) 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 ISIS strongholds in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp and Hajar al-Aswad after a month-long 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 ISIS' 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 ISIS 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 were now clearing the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, a built-up residential area, of the last remaining ISIS fighters. It said the month of fighting left scores dead on both sides.

The TV earlier quoted an unnamed Syrian military official as saying the two-day truce had been in place to evacuate women, children and the elderly on Sunday night from Hajar al-Aswad. Syrian state media denied a deal was reached to evacuate fighters.

The push into Hajar al-Aswad and Yarmouk came after government forces captured the last rebel-held southern and eastern suburbs of Damascus, boosting security in Assad's seat of power.

"The Daesh terrorist organization was wiped out in Hajar al-Aswad," an unnamed Syrian soldier told state TV, using an Arabic acronym to refer to ISIS. "We will keep marching until we liberate all parts of Syria."

Assad's forces have been making steady gains since 2015, when Russia launched an air campaign on behalf of his forces. In December 2016, government forces captured rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, marking Assad's biggest victory since the conflict began. In March and April, thousands of opposition fighters surrendered and were evacuated from Damascus suburbs known as eastern Ghouta, after a crushing government offensive.

Shortly before noon on Monday, when the truce was supposed to end in Hajar al-Aswad, government warplanes struck ISIS positions as Syrian troops began advancing deeper into the neighborhood. The Observatory said ISIS fighters have been setting their offices and vehicles on fire so that government forces would not be able to seize equipment or documents belonging to the group.

The extremists have been driven from nearly all the territory they once held in Syria and neighboring Iraq, but still maintain a presence in remote areas along the border.

Both Russia and Iran have provided crucial military support to Assad's forces, giving them the upper hand in the civil war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Assad during a meeting last week that a political settlement in Syria should encourage foreign countries to withdraw their troops from Syria. Putin's envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, said the Russian leader was referring to Iranian forces.

But on Monday, Tehran appeared to reject that idea, saying its forces will remain in Syria and continue fighting "terrorism" at the request of the Syrian government.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters Monday that no one can force Tehran to do anything it doesn't desire to do. "Our presence in Syria has been based on a request by the Syrian government and Iran will continue its support as long as the Syrian government wants," he said.</s>In this photo released Tuesday, May 15, 2018 by the Syrian official news agency, SANA, a convoy of Syrian government forces and police hold portraits of Syrian President Bashar Assad

The Syrian army pushed Islamic State militants out of a south Damascus pocket on Monday and declared the Syrian capital and its surroundings “completely safe” from militants for the first time in nearly seven years.

Pro-Syrian government forces have been battling for weeks to recover al-Hajar al-Aswad district and the adjacent Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp since driving rebels from eastern Ghouta in April.

A state television presenter said the recovery of al-Hajar al-Aswad meant the area south of Damascus had been completely cleared of insurgents.

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Syrian military declares Damascus free from ISIS, militants - דלג Syrian military declares Damascus free from ISIS, militants

The ultra-hardline jihadist group now controls only two besieged desert areas in eastern Syria, while another insurgent group that has pledged loyalty to it holds a small enclave in the southwest.

A temporary humanitarian ceasefire had been in place since Sunday night in al-Hajar al-Aswad to allow women, children and old people leave, state media said early on Monday.

Army soldiers fired into the air in celebration and held Syrian flags, against a smashed cityscape of shattered buildings and widespread destruction.

Buildings and walls were pocked-marked from bullets and shell-fire, metal satellite dishes were bent and scorched, and the dome of a mosque had a gaping hole near its base.

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On Sunday, a war monitor said fighters had begun withdrawing from the area towards Islamic State territory in eastern Syria under a surrender deal, but state media said fighting continued.

The war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Monday that buses had already started leaving south Damascus for Islamic State areas in eastern Syria.

While Assad has vowed to win back "every inch" of Syria, the map of the conflict suggests a more complicated time ahead from now on.

The U.S. military is in much of the east and northeast, which is controlled by Kurdish groups that want autonomy from Damascus. It has used force to defend the territory from pro-Assad forces.

Turkey has sent forces into the northwest to counter those same Kurdish groups, carving out a buffer zone where anti-Assad rebels have regrouped.

In the southwest, where rebels hold territory at the Israeli and Jordanian border, Assad faces the risk of conflict with Israel, which wants his Iranian-backed allies kept well away from the frontier and has mounted air strikes in Syria.</s>BEIRUT, LEBANON (3:20 A.M.) – An agreement was put in place in southern Damascus, tonight, after the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) agreed to surrender their last positions in the Yarmouk Camp and Hajar Al-Aswad.

According to a military source in Damascus, dozens of buses started entering the Yarmouk Camp and Hajar Al-Aswad to transport the Islamic State terrorists to the Badiya region in eastern Syria.

ISIS was forced to surrender these districts in southern Damascus after losing a large chunk of their territory to the Syrian Army this month.

With the Islamic State’s future departure, the city of Damascus will be free of any militant groups for the first time in seven years.</s>Besieged ISIS fighters in southern Damascus began to burn their headquarters and ammo depots in the district of al-Tadamon and the Yarmouk refugee camp as part of their preparations to withdraw towards an unknown area that could be the Homs desert, several Syrian pro-government sources reported on May 20.

The sources also confirmed that dozens of buses entered the ISIS-held areas in southern Damascus. However, the first batch of ISIS fighters and their families is yet to depart, likely due to logistical problems.

Earlier, several reports confirmed that the remaining fighters of ISIS in southern Damascus have surrendered and accepted an evacuation agreement, which was proposed by the Damascus government and possibly Palestinian factions. A ceasefire was even implemented on May 19.

More than 1,700 fighters of ISIS and thousands of civilians will be evacuated under the agreement. Despite of this, Syrian pro-government activists believe that the evacuation process will be faster than the previous evacuations in order to avoid any problems.
The Syrian government declares Damascus as "completely safe" from militant groups for the first time in seven years as it forces out ISIS from the area.