Battle of Damascus

A "huge explosion" near a military intelligence office in Damascus on Jan. 20 left a number of dead and wounded, a war monitor said, after state TV reported early indications suggested a "terrorist act".

Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighborhood of Damascus on March 20 killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others, Syrian state-run media said, marking one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.

Syrian rebels and their families began leaving a northern district of the capital on Monday, state television said, in the first evacuations from Damascus in the country's six-year war, reported AFP.

"Armed men and some of their families have begun leaving Barzeh on 40 buses heading towards northern Syria," the station said in a news alert.

A large explosion hit in the area of Damascus International Airport followed by a fire in the same place early on Thursday the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said, Reuters agency reports.

The cause of the blast was not clear, it added.

Rebels and jihadists launched a fresh assault on east Damascus on March 21, just two days before another round of U.N.-backed peace talks were set to get underway in Switzerland.

Clashes raged between regime forces on one side and opposition fighters and allied jihadists from the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly al-Qaeda's branch in the war-ravaged country.

Syrian government forces on Feb. 20 escalated their bombing campaign around Damascus, raining shells down on rebel territory and sending out a "bloody message" just days before renewed peace talks in Geneva.  

BELGRADE - In the early hours of Friday morning, the Syrian Army reported that Israel had carried out missile strikes targeting the Mezzeh military airport southwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus. Syrian military command has since warned Tel Aviv that it may take retaliatory measures.

The cessation of hostilities in Syria largely held on Sept. 16 despite minor clashes both in Aleppo and Damascus and a duel of words between Russia and the U.S., the two countries that support the silence of arms.