AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian jets and artillery struck rebel-held eastern Damascus suburbs on Saturday a day after a Russian sponsored ceasefire with a rebel group agreed a halt of fighting in the last opposition enclave in the capital, rebels and witnesses said.

FILE PHOTO: Children walk past rubble of damaged buildings at Ain Tarma, eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh/File Photo

The Russian defense ministry said on Friday it had reached a ceasefire that took effect at 21.00 hrs Moscow time (1800 GMT) with Failaq al Rahman, the main Free Syrian Army (FSA) group fending off a two-month widescale Syrian army offensive in Jobar district and nearby town of Ain Tarma.

A spokesman for Failaq al Rahman said both Jobar, which lies some 2 km (1.2 miles) east of the Old City wall, and nearby Ain Tarma on the edge of Eastern Ghouta witnessed army strikes and shelling soon after the ceasefire went into effect.

“After the first few hours ... there were many violations midnight they dropped barrel bombs and from the morning there have been strikes across the Ghouta,” Wael Alwan, spokesman for the group, said.

At least five civilians were killed in the towns of Hamouriya and Zalamka and fighters said there were several case of suffocation from rockets filled with chlorine that were fired at the front lines of Jobar and Ain Terma, he added.

The Syrian army elite 4th Division has been trying unsuccessfully to storm Jobar and residents say the army has retaliated for its heavy losses by shelling residential areas, leaving scores killed and wounded since the campaign was launched.

Moscow said on Friday that the ceasefire meant an earlier one announced last month in Eastern Ghouta now included all the moderate opposition groups in the main rebel stronghold that stretches from eastern to northeastern suburbs of Damascus.

The army has not commented on the latest Russian agreement with Failaq al Rahman whom it considers a terrorist group that threatens the capital. It however says it abides by truces Moscow has brokered.

Many fighters welcomed the ceasefire to help alleviate plight of civilians most hurt by aerial strikes but remain deeply skeptical about Russia’s readiness to get the Syrian army to stick to the terms of a cessation of fighting in several de-escalation zones that Russia has already announced

Moscow had already began to deploy military police in several areas across Syria such as in southwestern Syria where “de-escalation” zones had been announced.

“This shows the lack of seriousness by the Russia to put pressure on the regime,” Alwan added.

Failaq al Rahman said the Syrian army bombardment appeared to be an attempt to wreck a ceasefire deal whose main points included deploying Russian military police along the frontline, the release of detainees and allowing humanitarian goods into the besieged Eastern Ghouta.

“It seems the regime wants to take advantage of the opportunity to take revenge for its big losses during their many attempts to storm the Ghouta before the Russian military police enter to disengage the forces,” Alwan told Reuters.

Outnumbered and outgunned, local rebels fortified in elaborate tunnels and deploying ambushes have repelled repeated attempts to storm their stronghold, inflicting dozens of losses on the army since the campaign began.</s>Civilians killed by Syrian regime forces in Hamouriya town in Damascus suburbs...</s>AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian jets on Monday bombed residential areas in the eastern countryside of Damascus killing and injuring dozens in some of the heaviest bombing raids on the main rebel enclave near the capital in months, residents and activists said.

At least 22 people were killed and scores injured after four aerial raids hit a crowded district in the city of Douma, the main urban center of the Eastern Ghouta rebel stronghold to the east of the capital.

Many other bodies were still under the rubble, civil workers said.

The pro-opposition civil defense said on its twitter account that there were 21 raids alone on the other towns of Hamurya, Harasta and Saqba in the besieged Eastern Ghouta.

In the town of Saqba, just south of Douma, at least five people were killed when jets believed to be Russian struck a main market square in the town, two residents said.

Social media footage by the civil defense showed volunteers and civilians carrying wounded on stretchers after they were extracted from under the rubble of destroyed buildings in the once teeming areas.

"We are civilians. Why are they hitting us? Jets are above us. There are no terrorists," said a screaming young man in footage shown on pro-opposition Orient TV.

The Syrian army said on Monday it had hit at the heart of insurgent positions in Jobar, Arbeen and Zamalka and areas in the Eastern Ghouta, knocking down missile launchers and killing scores of "terrorists."

The Syrian army has said it is fighting against foreign financed terrorists who fire mortars on government-held areas in the capital. They deny they target civilians.

The intensive raids followed an offensive begun by the Syrian army and its allies since late February to encircle the rebel-held Barza neighborhood of the capital and cut it off from nearby Qaboun.

The army wants to destroy tunnels in Barza and Qaboun that it says rebels use to provide essential goods to Eastern Ghouta towns that have for years helped the area withstand the siege.

"Today the regime shelled and bombed ... they have not left a place they have not hit. They want to get the tunnels," said Abu Omar, a commander from rebel group Failaq al Rahman.

Government troops, backed by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, have been snuffing out pockets of rebellion near the capital, forcing surrender on besieged rebels.

The densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta has been besieged since 2013.

Several hundred thousand people are believed to be trapped there with the authorities making it difficult for humanitarian aid to be delivered by United Nations organizations.

Residents believe the government aims to push them into an eventual surrender through siege and bombardment that forces them to reach local agreements that guarantee fighters safe passage to other rebel-held parts of the country.</s>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that a ceasefire had been agreed in Eastern Ghouta in Syria's Damascus province until March 20.

Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's long-running civil war and has launched an aerial bombing campaign against anti-government rebel forces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said warplanes carried out at least five air raids against rebel-held parts of Eastern Ghouta and that the army had also bombarded it with rocket fire on Tuesday.

Clashes continued between rebels and pro-government forces on front lines in Eastern Ghouta with mutual shelling, the Observatory said, adding however that the intensity of the bombardment and clashes was less than in previous days.

That was contradicted by the Russian ministry, which said on its website that it had observed no violations of the ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta since it had started on March 6.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - Fighting between rebel groups in the biggest insurgent stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus entered a second day on Saturday while government forces pressed an offensive, a war monitor said.

The clashes broke out in part of the densely-populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta, which has been besieged by government troops since 2013.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the deaths of at least 74 fighters since clashes between rebel groups broke out on Friday. It also reported civilian casualties.

Jaish al-Islam is pitted against the Failaq al-Rahman group together with fighters from an alliance with links to al-Qaeda, according to the Observatory, rebels and activists.

A Failaq al-Rahman statement on Friday said Jaish al-Islam attacked some of its positions and said the factional fighting was not in the interests of the Eastern Ghouta or the Syrian revolution.

Fighting between the groups killed hundreds of people last April before a ceasefire was agreed in Qatar in May.

The rift was exploited by Syrian government forces to capture parts of the Eastern Ghouta, whose territory shrank by about a third in the second half of last year.

Jaish al-Islam is one of the biggest Syrian rebel groups and has been the dominant faction in the Eastern Ghouta. Its leader, Zahran Alloush, was killed in an air strike in December 2015.

Jaish al-Islam said in a statement it shared the same goals as Failaq al-Rahman and called on them to contain the crisis, adding that its dispute was with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (Liberation of the Levant Committee).

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is an alliance of factions formed in January, whose members include Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly al Qaeda's Nusra Front group.

During the fighting, Syrian government and allied forces attacked the rebel-held district of Qaboun northwest of Eastern Ghouta by land and air.

The Syrian government, which is backed by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, launched an offensive against Qaboun and neighboring Barza, which are believed to contain supply tunnels for the besieged enclave, in February.

Government forces advanced slightly in Qaboun on Friday, the Observatory said.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - For nearly four years, food, fuel and medicine have traveled across frontlines into the besieged eastern suburbs of Damascus through a network of underground tunnels.

But an army offensive near the Syrian capital has shut the routes into the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta, causing supplies to dwindle and prices to rocket, residents say.

"The price of fuel went up like crazy," said Adnan, 30, the head of a local aid group that distributes food.

A cooking gas canister now costs 50,000 Syrian pounds, nearly four times its price before the attack and almost 20 times the state-regulated price in nearby Damascus.

Adnan, whose aid group buys rice, lentils and other goods that arrive via the tunnels, said the shutdown and steep price hikes had triggered rising despair in the suburbs.

As the army tightens the noose, fighters and civilians are bracing for a full-blown assault and bitter shortages that could last through the winter.

"The operation aims to strangle the Ghouta ... by closing off the crossings and tunnels," Hamza Birqdar, military spokesman for the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, told Reuters.

"Trade through the tunnels has completely stopped."

Government forces have blockaded Eastern Ghouta, a densely populated pocket of satellite towns and farms, since 2013. It remains the only major rebel bastion near Damascus, though it has shrunk by almost half over the past year.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has been steadily defeating pockets of armed rebellion near the capital, with the help of Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias.

It ultimately aims to seize the Ghouta, pushing fighters to accept state rule or leave for rebel territory in the north, in a type of negotiated withdrawal that has helped shore up its rule over Syria's main urban centers.

Heavy fighting and air strikes have rocked the districts that stand between Damascus and Eastern Ghouta, severing smuggling routes that provided a lifeline for around 300,000 people in the besieged suburbs.

The army assault entered a higher gear in recent months in the districts of Barzeh and Qaboun, at the capital's eastern edges, which abruptly ended a local truce that had been in place with rebels there since 2014.

Their relative calm and location had turned them into a transit point where traders brought supplies from the capital and shuttled them underground into the opposition enclave. Government forces have now swept into most of the two districts.

The siege generated a black market economy and profiteers who traded across frontlines, says an activist who has smuggled medicine through one of the tunnels.

Goods prices were ramped up by payments to checkpoints in government-held areas and rebels that control the tunnels, the activist and other residents said.

Syrian officials were not available for comment on such allegations.

Syrian state media says Ghouta militants dug tunnels hundreds of meters long to move weapons and ambush army positions. The tunnels have been a target of army operations, with several blown up in recent months, it has said.

The wide array of rebels - including hardline jihadists and other groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies - have been on the back-foot across Syria.

In Eastern Ghouta, a bout of renewed rebel infighting, after a rebel attack at the fringes of Damascus quickly fizzled out in March, could play into the government's hands.

Birqdar said rebels faced "heavy shelling, air strikes, and incoming tanks" every day. "We must prepare for every scenario that could happen on the battlefield," he said.

"We are fully ready to negotiate over stopping the bloodshed by the regime, but will not accept any talks that lead to surrender." He ruled out a local evacuation deal.

The government says such deals have succeeded where U.N.-based peace talks failed. The opposition describes it as a strategy of forced displacement after years of siege - a method of warfare the United Nations has condemned as a war crime.

The U.N. has warned of impending starvation if aid does not reach Eastern Ghouta, where international deliveries have long been erratic and obstructed. A convoy that entered last week, for the first time in months, carried food and supplies for just about 10 percent of the estimated population.

"People have rushed to the markets to stock up," said Adnan. "Because they have bitter memories of 2013," when their towns first came under siege.

Merchants inside the Ghouta had filled up large warehouses that would last months, and residents would harvest crops in the area's remaining farmland in the summer, he said. "Things will get worse when winter comes."

The Wafideen crossing at the outskirts, where checkpoints allowed food to enter, has also been restricted since February, Adnan and others said.

One resident said rebel fighters also ran their own hidden routes through which they had moved unnoticed or smuggled arms.

Medics relied on the tunnels for antibiotics, anesthetics, and other supplies, said Abu Ibrahim Baker, a surgeon in Eastern Ghouta. Hospitals would be "able to hold out, God willing, but not for very long," he said.</s>BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Warplanes bombed rebel-held towns east of Damascus on Wednesday, striking residential areas where Russia had declared a ceasefire less than 24 hours earlier and leaving dozens injured, according to residents, rebels and a monitoring group.

Air raids and artillery hit three towns in Eastern Ghouta, part of Syria's Damascus province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. A ceasefire had been agreed in the area until March 20, Russia's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Syrian air force struck at jihadists linked to a former al Qaeda offshoot in Irbeen, a city north-east of Damascus in Eastern Ghouta, and in al Qaboun, closer to the center of the capital, according to a media unit of Hezbollah, a Damascus ally. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military.

At least 30 air raids hit the region on Wednesday, along with dozens of artillery rounds and ground-to-ground missiles fired from government-held areas, a rebel and a resident said.

The Syrian army has been closing in on eastern suburbs of Damascus still in rebel hands, such as Qaboun, and seeking to storm neighboring towns in Eastern Ghouta. Air raids and fighting have escalated in recent days, opposition sources said.

The army and its allies are trying to force rebels to agree to truces similar to those that have led to the evacuation of thousands of opposition fighters to northern Syria.

The army has for the last 20 days concentrated its air strikes on Qaboun district, effectively ending a ceasefire that rebels in the area agreed with the Syrian army which had been in place since the end of 2013.

The army suspects tunnels from Qaboun to Eastern Ghouta have become a lifeline for people and rebels in the besieged area, the opposition's largest remaining stronghold near Damascus.

"If they take over Qaboun, the regime will be able to enforce a complete siege of Ghouta," said a fighter from Failaq al Rahman, a rebel group operating in the area called Fahed.

Thousands of civilians have fled Qaboun, a district that had drawn tens of thousands of people escaping from violence elsewhere. They have found refuge in the adjoining Damascene district of Barza, where many families have taken refuge in the streets, public gardens and mosques.

Barza has agreed a full truce with the government that has been in place since 2014. Unlike other besieged suburbs, most of civilians living in Barza can go to the capital to work and to buy food and other supplies.

Before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, more than half a million people lived in Eastern Ghouta. The sprawling mix of urban districts and farmland was once a major economic hub serving the capital, but now its population has dwindled to tens of thousands and continues to shrink.</s>AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels stormed a government-held area in northeastern Damascus on Tuesday for the second time in three days, sources on both sides of the fighting said, in the opposition's first such large scale foray in over four years in the capital.

For rebels, the assault has shown they are still able to wage offensive action, though their situation remains very difficult near Damascus and across the country as a whole.

Separately, an alliance of rebel groups said on Tuesday it had launched a new offensive near the city of Hama in the central part of western Syria.

President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army, along with allied Russian, Iranian and Shi'ite militia forces, have gained the upper hand in the war for western Syria over the past 18 months, culminating in the full recapture of Aleppo in December.

Witnesses in Damascus said several rockets were fired into central, government-held parts of the city by rebels and state media reported that the army had conducted numerous air and artillery strikes against insurgents.

The spokesman for one of the main insurgent groups involved in the attack told Reuters new offensive began at 5.00 a.m., targeting an area rebel fighters had seized from government control on Sunday before being forced to retreat.

A Syrian military source told Reuters rebel fighters had entered the area, setting off a car bomb at the start of the attack. The source said a group of rebels that had entered the area had been encircled and were "being dealt with".

The rebel groups have launched the assault from their Eastern Ghouta stronghold to the east of the capital. Government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks, seeking to tighten a siege on the area. The rebel assault aims partly to relieve that pressure.

The fighting has focused around the Abassiyin area of the northeastern Jobar district, some 2 km east of the Old City walls, at a major road junction leading into the capital.

A witness in the Tijara residential area near the fighting said dozens of tanks were deployed - an unusual scene for residents of inner Damascus, whose quarters been spared the widespread fighting on the fringes of the sprawling city.

North of Hama, jihadist rebel groups said they had launched a new offensive which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said had made a considerable advance and seized points inside the towns of Soran and Maardas.

A military media unit run by Hezbollah said that fighting continued in the towns.

Wael Alwan, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group Failaq al Rahman, said: "We launched the new offensive and we restored all the points we withdrew from on Monday."

He said the attack strengthened the hand of the mainstream opposition ahead of new peace talks in Geneva on Thursday. "Our gains today will give strength to our presence in Geneva after tomorrow," he added.

Another rebel official heading to Geneva said the attack showed the limitations of Russia's extensive military support.

"This is a military and political message to Russia that the regime is weak and has no full control and is unable to decisively tilt the balance in its favor militarily," Issam al Rayess, a spokesman for the FSA's Southern Front alliance of Western and Arab backed rebel groups.

The Syrian military source said: "They entered a narrow pocket - the same area of the (previous) breach - and now this group is being dealt with."

State media said rebels who infiltrated the city and Jobar had fled with scores arrested or killed but gave no details.

State television played what it said was footage taken on Tuesday morning on Faris al-Khouri street, which runs toward the Abbasiyin garages, and showed thick dark smoke rising in the distance.

The government says the attack is being carried out by fighters of the Nusra Front, a jihadist group that was al Qaeda's official affiliate in the Syrian war until it declared they had broken off ties last year. The Nusra Front is now part of an Islamist alliance called Tahrir al-Sham.

The attack has relieved pressure on rebels who have lost ground in the nearby areas of Qaboun and Barza, where the army says rebels have constructed an elaborate network of tunnels that provide essential goods that have for years helped Eastern Ghouta withstand a tough siege.

A rebel commander said the Syrian army was intensifying its shelling on areas where they had advanced in Jobar and towns across Eastern Ghouta. "There is no place that has not been hit," said Abu Abdo a field commander from Failaq al Rahman brigade.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said at least 143 air raids were conducted by the Syrian army on rebel held eastern parts of Damascus, mostly targeting Jobar, since the rebels launched their offensive.</s>The last moderate armed opposition group in East Ghouta has accepted the terms of the de-escalation agreement after successful negotiations with the Russian reconciliation committee, the defense ministry said."Representatives of the Defense Ministry of Russia and the Syrian opposition's large grouping Faylaq Al-Rahman have signed an agreement in the city of Geneva, under which the group will join the ceasefire from 21:00 Moscow time in the de-escalation zone of East Ghouta," the ministry said in a statement Friday.Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra linked terrorist cells in the Damascus region are still excluded from the ceasefire deal which requires all armed opposition to halt hostilities and allow food and humanitarian aid to be brought in.Besides being previously active in East Ghouta, Faylaq Al-Rahman, affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, is also the main rebel group in Jobar, a municipality of the Syrian capital Damascus."Through negotiations, Russia's defense ministry has managed to involve in the ceasefire in the East Ghouta de-escalation zone all of the moderate opposition groups operating there," the ministry said.Eastern Ghouta is in one of four de-escalation zones that have been established in Syria. Other safe zones include Idlib in the north, Homs in the east, and a fourth in southern Syria, that is yet to be demarcated.The proposal to establish four de-escalation zones was signed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, with the approval of the Syrian government in the Kazakh capital Astana in May. The UN has welcomed the initiative.All four designated zones are areas controlled by armed rebels who have been under pressure from the government forces' advance. Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, they are to be monitored by the Astana signatories, while Russia retains the right to control the airspace above them, without engaging in air raids. Russian military police control the implementation of the agreement on the ground.</s>BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's army staged a counterattack in northeastern Damascus on Monday, but there were conflicting accounts of how much ground it regained after Sunday's rebel assault.

A Syrian military source and a war monitor said the army had recaptured all the positions it had lost, but rebels said they were still holding on to some of their gains despite heavy aerial bombing that had forced them to retreat.

The army's advance involved heavy fighting and intense air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a military media unit run by the army's ally Hezbollah said.

A Reuters witness saw war planes circling in the sky above northeast Damascus, mortar fire, and a street with a line of burned-out cars from the fighting in the Jobar and al-Qaboun districts.

The Observatory, a British-based war monitor that collects information from a network of sources across Syria, said heavy fighting continued and that the army had unleashed more than 500 air raids and artillery strikes. The Hezbollah-run military media unit said that air raids were aimed at rebel supply lines.

Rebels had attacked in Jobar to relieve military pressure after their loss of ground in nearby Qaboun and Barza, a commander from the Failaq al-Rahman group which is fighting there said on Sunday.

The intensity of the Syrian army's counterattack forced the rebels to retreat on Sunday night from at least 60 percent of the areas they captured that day in an industrial area that separated Qaboun from Jobar, a rebel spokesman said.

"Today the clashes are difficult and there is no progress in the face of this ferocious bombardment that is not just limited to the frontline but all night the regime was shelling the cities and towns in Eastern Ghouta in retaliation," Wael Alwan, the spokesman for Failaq al Rahman, told Reuters.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his army, along with allied Russian, Iranian and Shi'ite militia forces, have put rebels on the back foot with a steady succession of military victories over the past 18 months, including around Damascus.

For rebels, however, their first such large scale foray in over four years inside the capital signaled they were still able to wage offensive actions despite their string of defeats.

"This battle gave hope we can stand up to the regime's military machine ... It was again us going back to a sort of balance of force and not just defending ourselves," Alwan said.

Rebels still hold a large, heavily populated enclave in the Eastern Ghouta district of farms and towns to the east of the capital, as well as some Damascus districts in the south, east and northeast of the city.

The most recent fighting has focused on the areas around Qaboun and Barza, which the army has isolated from the rest of the main rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta and the eastern districts of Damascus.
A day after a Russian sponsored ceasefire with a rebel group agreed a halt of fighting in the last opposition enclave in the capital, Syrian government airplanes and artillery strike rebel-held eastern Damascus suburbs and Ghouta with barrel bombs, killing at least five civilians in the towns of Hamouriya and Zalamka with several case of suffocation from rockets filled with chlorine that were fired at the front lines of Jobar and Ain Terma.