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News ID: 55145
Publish Date : 15 July 2018 - 21:36

Syrian Army Retakes First Village in Quneitra



DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Syrian government forces widened their offensive in the country's southwest on Sunday to Quneitra province, a region adjoining the occupied Golan Heights, a war monitor and militant sources said.
Government forces have captured most of the southwest's Dara’a province in the offensive that began in June.
Terrorists still hold a strip straddling Dara’a and Quneitra provinces which adjoins the Golan Heights. Daesh-affiliated terrorists also occupy a pocket on the Jordanian border.
Hundreds of terrorists and their families were preparing Sunday to leave Dara’a city - the birthplace of the sedition that morphed into a foreign-backed militancy - to be taken on buses to militant-held areas in the north.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and militants said Syrian forces had seized the village of Mashara, about 11 km (7 miles) from the Golan fence, after heavy shelling, and were now trying to capture elevated land south of the village with shelling and airstrikes.
Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen said the Syrian army was advancing towards that elevated Tel Mashara area.
The militants are leaving the Dara’a al-Balad neighborhood which had been under their control for years. Under the deal terrorists would hand over weapons, and those who do not wish to live under state rule would be transferred out.
A militant, Abu Shaima, said at least 500 fighters were going to get on around 15 buses and that his bus was already on the road north to terrorist-held Idlib province.
Syrian state news agency SANA said on Sunday that terrorists had been handing over their heavy weapons to the Syrian army, showing images of armored vehicles and heavy artillery it said had been collected.
A large humanitarian aid operation to government-held areas of southwest Syria began this week, after the UN on Monday said the government had asked it to begin deliveries. Sixteen trucks carrying 3,000 food parcels reached the towns of Nassib and Um al-Mayathen in Dara’a province near a border crossing with Jordan on Sunday, a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) statement said.
Aid was also delivered to four other areas of Dara’a earlier in the week, SARC said.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday an accord aimed at containing the Syrian conflict could be destroyed if Syrian government forces target the Idlib region, a Turkish presidential source said.
The two presidents spoke by telephone after the Syrian government raised the national flag on Thursday over areas of Dara’a.  
"President Erdogan stressed that the targeting of civilians in Dara’a was worrying and said that if the Damascus regime targeted Idlib in the same way the essence of the Astana accord could be completely destroyed,” the source said.
Turkey has set up a series of observation posts in Idlib as part of a deal which it reached last year with Russia and Iran in the Kazakh capital Astana to reduce fighting between terrorists and the Syrian government in de-escalation zones.
Russian officials have warned so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) negotiators in Dara’a that they plan to launch an attack on Idlib in September, an FSA spokesman told the SMART opposition news agenc