...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...the day before.
Led by the 105th Brigade of the Elite Republican Guard, the Paleostine Liberation Army (PLA) and National Defense Forces (NDF), government forces overran the last sniper nests and gun positions despite facing many Islamist units whom tried desperately to cling onto control of the town, located southeast of the Islamist stronghold of Douma.
The media wing of Jaish al-Islam claimed its turbans were able to maintain a foothold in Hawsh al-Dawahra; however, a source embedded with the Elite Republican Guard assured al-Masdar News that all turbans had been pushed to the town’s western fields and outskirts.
Jaish al-Islam also published footage of the battle, claiming to have destroyed a BMP-1 and T-72 tank along with killing 16 SAA soldiers, events which the aforementioned SAA source told al-Masdar News were exaggerated.