Syrian forces win new victories after West's failed attack

Syrian troops and allies have opened several new fronts and won a string of victories against terrorists despite Saturday's missile raid by the Western powers.

On Thursday night the Syrian Arab Army and allied Palestinian refugee militia launched an offensive against Islamic State (ISIS) and the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra Front in Yarmouk, a southern suburb of Damascus, Lebanon's Al Masdar News reported.

That was after the extremists rejected an offer of safe passage for them and their families to parts of the country still held by their fellows.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said only that air strikes had been launched against the two groups in al-Hajar al-Aswad, a neighbouring district to Yarmouk in the last terrorist-occupied area of the capital. But claimed video footage of the fighting emerged on social media.

Foreign-backed sectarians seized the heavily urbanised Palestinian refugee camp since soon after the attempted 2011 coup against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Dumayr liberated

The start of the offensive coincided with the raising of the Syrian flag over the town of Dumayr, northeast of the capital, for the first time in years. Two days earlier some 1,500 militants from the Saudi-backed Army of Islam agreed to surrender and board buses to Jarabulus on the northern border with Turkey, along with around 3,500 of their wives and children.

The same group finally gave up the northeastern Douma suburb of Damascus last week, despite claims by so-called White Helmets propaganda outfit of a chemical weapon attack there, since debunked by veteran news correspondent Robert Fisk.

Britain, France and the US responded with a barrage of 103 cruise missiles ― of which Syria's 30-year-old air defences shot down 71, according to Russia's Ministry of Defence.

Syria said Israel launched its missile raid on Dumayr air base, outside the town and firmly under government control, on Sunday and again on Tuesday, but all were shot down ― like the dozen fired at the base on Saturday.

Just north of Dumayr, the crack Tiger Forces brigade surrounded more sectarians in al-Ruhaybah on the western tip of the large, mountainous East Qalamoun pocket.

And in the Talbiseh pocket north of the central city of Homs, a ceasefire to allow surrender talks with Russian military representatives was announced on Wednesday after an army offensive there liberated a dozen settlements.

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