BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian capital of Damascus and its surrounding suburbs are entirely free of rebel fighters for the first time in seven years, the government said on Monday.

That milestone was achieved when the last Islamic State fighters reached an agreement with the government over the weekend to leave the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk and the neighboring town of Hajar al-Aswad and head to one of the militant group’s last strongholds in eastern Syria.

Their retreat, confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, ended weeks of fighting that had reduced the camp, once home to about 160,000, to smoking, dusty rubble.

After the final convoy of militants left, the government released a statement saying, “The Syrian General Command of the Army and Armed Forces announced Damascus and Damascus countryside entirely safe areas after fully cleansing al-Hajar al-Aswad and al-Yarmouk Camp of terrorism.” </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> 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.

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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.

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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.

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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> The Syrian Army has liberated the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, located south of Damascus, from terrorists, a security services source told.

Damascus is completely freed from militants as the Syrian Army clears the last stronghold, according to the source. The information has been confirmed by the Syrian Army.

“The Syrian Army has liberated the Yarmouk camp south of Damascus and hoisted the Syrian flag there,” the source said.

Syrian state television says the Syrian army has taken control of the Daesh-help Al Hajar Al Aswad district South of Damascus.

“As a result of a joint operation of our armed forces and allies, Al Hajar Al Aswad and the surrounding territories have been completely liberated from terrorists,” the army said in a statement.

The Syrian army is clearing out the last remaining blocks of the recently liberated Yarmouk camp, located in the south of Damascus, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

A Syrian officer said that the soldiers should inspect every building in the camp in order to find potential suicide attackers or snipers to avoid violence in the future.

Earlier, the Syrian government forces regained control over the eastern neighborhoods of the district of Yarmouk located south of Damascus. The operation was launched after the liberation of Eastern Ghouta on Damascus’ outskirts from militants. with the last remaining town, Douma, being retaken from militants on April 12.

Yarmouk refugee camp and surrounding settlements were the last strongholds of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and al Nusra Front terrorists near Damascus. Since an armed conflict broke out in Syria in 2011, the Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinian and Syrian refugees had been regularly taken over by different militant groups, which has resulted in catastrophic humanitarian conditions for the refugees. Currently, some 18,000 refugees live in the camp. </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> 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> Soldiers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad forces are deployed at al-Qadam area near Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus Thomson Reuters By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops on Sunday tightened the noose around a major Palestinian refugee camp held by Islamic State militants in southern Damascus where hundreds of civilians face an uncertain future, state media, witnesses and residents said.

Nearly two weeks into a campaign to capture the last area near the capital outside government control that has left many parts of the once teeming Yarmouk camp in ruins, state media announced al Qadm neighborhood next to the camp was retaken.

Opposition sources said the army was now engaged in fierce fighting with militants on the outskirts of Yarmouk camp where an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 militants are now encircled.

The militants who are besieged in an ever shrinking area have repelled successive raids to enter their heavily defended stronghold.

The Yarmouk campaign is part of a wider-Russian backed offensive to regain the last pocket in opposition hands around the capital after retaking eastern Ghouta this month.

It has shown no sign of letting up since Western countries launched air strikes on April 14 to punish the government for a suspected poison gas attack.

The fate of hundreds of Palestinians, mostly sick and elderly women and children still in the camp that was once the largest in Syria is uncertain. UNRWA, the U.N body responsible for Palestinian refugees has called on warring parties to spare civilians.

"There are some families that have been buried under the rubble and no one is able to retrieve their bodies," said Abu Osama, a resident who fled the camp two days ago to nearby Yalda, joining thousands of others seeking relative safety there since the start of the latest offensive.

"The regime is just burning and destroying ... and then trying to advance on several fronts," Rami al Sayed, a former resident of Yarmouk who is now on its outskirts, said.

The camp, which has been under siege by the army since rebels captured it in 2012, was home to some 160,000 Palestinians before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendents.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said its fighters had repelled the latest attacks on their positions in al Qadam and Hay al Tadamon, killing at least 17 army fighters killed in sniper attacks.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants also pushed overnight into some positions in the southern Damascus pocket where mainly mainstream rebels operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are in control, opposition sources said.

A deal was reached overnight under Russian auspices to evacuate those FSA rebels who are based in the towns of Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahem that adjoin Islamic State-held areas to opposition held areas in northern Syria, a rebel source said confirming leaks in state media.

Those rebels who have in the past fought both the militants and the Syrian army have also been targeted by the army in an attempt to force them to capitulate. </s> The Syrian government forces on Monday announced that the last extremist stronghold in southern Damascus, the al-Hajar al-Aswad District, has been recaptured, marking the military's complete control over Damascus and its suburb areas after seven years of fighting.



The al-Hajar al-Aswad District is seven kilometers to downtown Damascus. The government troops on April 19 began its military operation to take back the district, along with the adjacent Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp which were occupied by extremists, using airstrikes and intensive cannon and rocket strikes.





Earlier in the day, The Syrian government denied reports that the government forces observed a brief ceasefire with extremists on Sunday.It stated that the government forces only implemented a short-term moratorium so that women, children, and the elderly could withdraw, and resumed cleanup operations on the afternoon of Monday, eventually ending the extremists' presence in the capital and its surrounding areas."In the last period (of the operation), we surrounded the local extremists, and the encirclement became very small as we are closing in. The combat with extremists became very short-ranged, and we eventually neutralized them," said Colonel Ahmad Ezzeldin.The recapture of al-Hajar al-Aswad District marks the complete liberation of Damascus since 2011. The government forces will continue to sweep houses and tunnels for hidden suicide attackers and snipers next. </s> Syria's military announced Monday that it cleared Damascus and its suburbs of the last elements of the Islamic state militant group, ISIS.

According to government reports, the Syrian army had driven ISIS out of the rebel group's last remaining strongholds in southern Damascus; this marks the first time that President Bashar al-Assad's government has total control of the capital since the rebellion began in 2011.

Syrian state TV broadcast footage of tanks rolling through a shattered neighborhood once held by rebels, as government troops waved the national flag. Army Gen. Ali Mayhoub announced that military operations in and around the capital had been a success and that the area is "completely secure" after the army captured former ISIS strongholds of Yarmouk refugee camp and the Hajar al-Aswad district south of the capital.

The military left "big numbers of Daesh (ISIS) terrorists dead," reported the Syrian Arab News Agency.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group downplayed the military victory, saying that it was a "secret agreement" between the government and ISIS that allowed the rebels to depart.

The organization claimed that ISIS fighters and their families boarded "some 32 buses that carried out about 1600 people aboard" and that they were driven toward the Syrian Desert.

Syrian state media denied there was a deal to evacuate fighters, according to the Associated Press, which quoted one military official as saying that a two-day truce had been arranged to evacuate women, children and the elderly on Sunday night from Hajar al-Aswad.

Amy Austin Holmes, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told NPR that this was an historic day for Assad's government. "The regime has been saying for some time now that they want to take back all of Syria. This is just one more step toward accomplishing that goal."

She added, "Whether it will be able to retake all area currently under Kurdish control, that is a whole other question."

With support from Russia and Iran, Syrian forces have made sweeping victories in territories controlled by the opposition. The spring saw thousands of rebel fighters surrender and board crammed buses out of eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, following weeks of bombardment.

In April, the Syrian army took control of at least two villages from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces east of the Euphrates River, near the border with Iraq where Kurdish forces had control.

In 2016, government forces enjoyed their biggest victory, capturing neighborhoods in Aleppo that rebels had controlled for years. As Syria's largest city, Aleppo was considered "the heart of the revolution."

More than 5.6 million people have fled the war-torn country since the civil war started and 6.6 are internally displaced.
Syrian government forces declare Damascus and its surroundings "completely safe" for the first time since 2011, after taking Yarmouk Camp and Hajar al-Aswad from ISIL.