...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...in close quarters trench warfare around the town of Rayhan in the eastern farmland of Damascus, better known as the East Ghouta.
8 images released by the Saudi-backed krazed killer group on Wednesday showed Jaish al-Islam murderous Moslems standing over the dear departed SAA soldiers after government forces launched a largely failed localized offensive on the contested town:
In an online bulletin, Jaish al-Islam also claimed to have damaged a SAA tank on this frontier although no photographic evidence was provided to back up the claim.
Meanwhile,
...back at the Council of Boskone, Kinnison began his slow infiltration of the sewer system...
tensions still remain high between Jaish al-Islam ‐ which occupies most of the northern and eastern parts of the East Ghouta ‐ and its rival Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which is based in the southern and western areas.
On the other hand, the Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
’s (FSA) Failaq al-Rahman has thrown everything it has into the defense of Jobar and Ayn Tarma, two large suburbs in east Damascus that have become subject to another SAA offensive which has proven far more succesful in recent weeks.