Syria’s army has pushed the last ISIL fighters out of the al-Hajar al-Aswad district south of Damascus, Syrian state TV said on Monday.
The Syrian army and its allies have been battling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters for weeks to recapture a tiny enclave in al-Hajar al-Aswad and the adjacent Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, the last area outside government control in or around the capital.
State TV broadcast footage of the shattered area and said air strikes “were targeting the last terrorist remnants” in the area after reporting earlier that a temporary humanitarian ceasefire had been in place since Sunday night.
On Sunday, activists said fighters had begun withdrawing from the area towards ISIL-controlled territory in eastern Syria under a ceasefire deal, but state media said fighting continued.
The armed group had controlled the tiny pocket in south Damascus and two besieged desert areas in eastern Syria, while another armed group that has pledged loyalty to it holds a small enclave in the southwest.
Yarmouk was the largest Palestinian camp in Syria and was put under crippling government siege in 2012 – making it one of the longest besiegements of Syria’s war.
During the siege, its 160,000-strong population dwindled to just several hundred people.
Source – Al Jazeera