All of Damascus now under army control: General

[1]

The Syrian army now has all of the capital under its control, a brigadier general on Saturday told journalists visiting the neighbourhood of Tadamun, the scene of heavy fighting earlier in the day.

"We have cleansed all the districts of Damascus, from Al-Midan to Mazzeh, from Al-Hajar Al-Aswad to Qadam... to Tadamun," said the general who led the military operation in Tadamun, refusing to give his name.

The officer said regime forces retook the southern district at 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) on Saturday, and that it was the last rebel bastion in the city to be retaken by the military.

"The (rebel) Free Syrian Army has withdrawn from Tadamun," anti-regime activist Lena al-Shami said in Beirut by Skype.

"But the FSA is everywhere in the capital. They cannot and will not take control of any area here in Damascus. Instead, they are resorting to hit-and-run tactics against important regime targets."

Fighting erupted in Damascus on July 15 and raged for several days as rebels seized several districts, forcing thousands of residents to flee for safety from what had for many months been the country's safest city.

"The situation in Damascus is excellent and stable," the general told reporters.

"There is no more presence of armed groups apart for some individuals who are moving from one place to another, just to prove that they exist."

When clashes erupted earlier on Saturday in Tadamun, the scene of heavy fighting a fortnight ago, state television said special forces were 'cleansing the district of Tadamun from terrorists'.

Tadamun borders the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp and is home to both Syrians and Palestinians.

The district is now deserted and visibly devastated by the violence, with electricity cables hanging down between rooftops and paving badly damaged.

In Yalda next to Tadamun, a reporter saw a dozen corpses thrown on a rubbish dump. Some had been burned, and others mutilated. "These are civilians who were kidnapped and killed by the armed groups," the general said of killings the state news agency SANA described as 'horrible massacres'.

The rebels had buried their dead in a hilly park in Tadamun, where the local mosque had been turned into a clinic for the wounded, and where traces of blood and dirty dressings remained.

It was clear the rebels had also been eating in the mosque-clinic, and that they had been using whiteboards there to note military moves.

The neighbourhood walls were scrawled in slogans including 'Strike!', 'A nation led by Mohammed will not kneel' and 'Freedom for ever'.