Syrian Army Says Damascus and Surroundings Fully Secure, Islamic State Group Ousted

Soldiers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad forces are deployed at al-Qadam area near Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus, Syria April 29, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

The Syrian army has restored control over all areas surrounding the capital Damascus, it said Monday, for the first time since early in the seven-year war, after pushing Islamic State group out of a south Damascus pocket.

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

In a televised statement Syria's army high command said al-Hajar al-Aswad and Yarmouk had been cleared of militants.

"Damascus and its surroundings and Damascus countryside and its villages are completely secure areas," the statement said, adding that the army would continue to fight "terrorism" across Syria.

With its complete capture of the environs of the capital, the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad is now in by far its strongest position since the early days of the conflict which has killed hundreds of thousands of people while displacing millions.

Anti-government groups now mainly control just two large areas in the northwest and southwest near borders with Turkey and Jordan. Turkey and the United States also have presences in parts of Syria outside government control.

The ultra-hardline group Islamic State, which was driven from most of the Euphrates River valley last year, now controls only two besieged desert areas in eastern Syria. Another extremist group that has pledged loyalty to it holds a small enclave in the southwest.

Islamic State group also captured a third of neighboring Iraq in 2014 but was largely defeated there last year.

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