Syrian regime soldiers killed, injured in rebel attack near Damascus

Several Syrian regime soldiers have been killed and injured in an attack which a rebel group says it carried out in revenge for detainees killed under regime torture

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab Staff

03 July, 2020

Attacks on regime soldiers in Ghouta have increased recently [Getty]

Several members of the regime’s “Military Security” branch have been killed and injured in an explosion targeting a checkpoint near Damascus.

The blast happened in the town of Saqba in the eastern Ghouta area near the Syrian capital, which was under rebel control until 2018.

The Qasioun Brigade rebel group took responsibility for the attack, which was carried out with an improvised explosive device (IED). The Syrian websites which reported the news said the exact number of killed and injured could not be determined.

The Qasioun Brigade, which carries out sporadic attacks targeting regime officials and troops in the Damascus area, said that the attack was “in revenge for our martyrs who were killed under torture in the regime’s prisons, as shown in the leaked Caesar images.”

In 2015, a Syrian defector only known as “Caesar” smuggled out 53,275 photographs of torture in Syrian regime jails showing thousands of detainees being killed. Tens of thousands of political prisoners remain in regime detention, with the fate of many of them unknown.

Last month, US economic sanctions against the Syrian regime, passed under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, came into force.

On Wednesday the Qasioun Brigades said that they had shot dead a regime lieutenant in the Jabal Harmoun area west of Damascus.

Many of the areas which the regime took over from rebels in Russian-backed military campaigns in 2018, notably Daraa, have remained restive, with attacks on regime targets, occasional protests, and other forms of resistance.

Last week, the Syrian “Voice of the Capital” opposition website reported that young men attacked a regime checkpoint in the town of Erbin in the eastern Ghouta area with knives, injuring four members of the regime’s Military Security.

Regime security stormed dozens of houses in the area in response to the incident, arresting five men. Young men in the Ghouta area are frequently targeted by the regime for forcible conscription into its army, or for detention on the grounds that they had previously taken part in opposition activities.