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Syrian Army exploits rebel infighting to advance in east Damascus
[ALMASDARNEWS] With rebel forces heavily invested in defeating one another in rural Damascus, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is slowly but surely gaining ground in the embattled al-Qaboun neighborhood on the eastern fringes of the Syrian capital.

On Saturday, the 105th Brigade of the Elite Republican Guard seized a batch of building blocks in the southern sector of the district following previous gains in the same area yesterday.

Effectively, Syrian government troops have reached the Abd al-Ghani Bajqni school which has been turned into a sniper nest fortification by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Syrian al-Qaeda branch) and Failaq al-Rahman (Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
group).

Remarkably, rebel-held sections of the al-Qaboun district are just 600 meters from being split in two down the middle due to recent SAA advances.

Much similar to the Daraya offensive last year, chopping up the pocket into smaller fractions will likely speed up the SAA’s seemingly inevitable victory. Leading this operation is the 42nd Brigade of the 4th Division and 105th Brigade of the Elite Republican Guard, commanded by Brigadier General Ali Mahmoud and Colonel Ghayath Galla.

The Elite Republican Guards are primarily engaged on the southern sector of al-Qaboun district while the 4th Mechanized Division is deployed on its eastern and western axis.
Posted by: Fred 2017-04-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=487035