...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group as regime forces push to clear
The
Since mid-April, forces loyal to Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
The Scourge of Hama...
have pounded IS in its last Damascus bastion.
Retaking the area, which includes Hajar al-Aswad and the Paleostinian refugee camp of Yarmuk, would place the regime in full control of the capital and its surroundings for the first time since 2012.
"The festivities continue. Despite its firepower, the regime has been unable to achieve any significant advance on the ground for a week," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
"IS is entrenched in tunnels and underground shelters and it has been conducting counter-attacks since Saturday."
At least 203 pro-government fighters have been killed along with 159 IS
Government forces have retaken 60 per cent of Hajar al-Aswad, but
Once a thriving district home to some 160,000 Paleostinians and Syrians, Yarmuk's population has fallen to just a few hundred people.
The regime continued to pound the area with air strikes and artillery fire on Saturday, the Observatory said.
IS has been expelled from most of the country since it declared a "caliphate" across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014.
But it still holds around five per cent of Syrian territory, in eastern and central desert holdouts and on the edge of Damascus.
Syria's war has killed more than 350,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests before spiralling into a complex conflict involving world powers and murderous Moslems.