Syrian regime has taken total control of Damascus

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - The Syrian regime has reclaimed total control of Damascus, a Russian military official announced on Wednesday.

Yarmouk Camp, the last Daesh stronghold in the Damascus region, was cleared of terrorists, the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Sergey Rudskoy said in a news conference in Moscow.

"To date, the armed groups of Daesh operating in the western part of Yarmouk, were completely destroyed, [and] the territory came under the control of government troops," he said.

The Syrian regime has thus reclaimed all of Damascus -- including the city’s outskirts -- for the first time since the conflict erupted in 2011.

Located eight kilometers (five miles) south of Damascus and inhabited mostly by Palestinian refugees, Yarmouk Camp sits on 16 square kilometers (six square miles) of land.

For the past five years, the camp had remained under siege by the Bashar al-Assad regime and Iran-backed militia groups.