On the border line between Jobar and Zamalka - January 16, 2014

On the border line between Jobar and Zamalka - January 16, 2014

Positional fighting has continued in Jobar. Preventive fire strikes were periodically delivered on the terrorist positions.

This day, we went to the front line to witness what the terrorists do to the territory they happen to occupy.

As we moved on, we passed by the spot that ANNA News team had once used to film the SAA tank’s movements, every corner inside the building was memorable for its own historical significance.

 We moved along the route of SAA soldiers’ recent advancement. It was the path of recent room-by-room close-range fights. I had already got used to all those heaps of broken bricks and concrete, the ruins of someone else’s houses, and scattered vestiges of someone else’s dwellings. Before the militants entered this town district, about 100,000 residents had lived here. Today, they have lost their houses, as all the residents were forced to flee this place to avoid getting killed.

Despite the fact that we were moving in trenches, we had to keep our heads down. Enemy snipers kept firing upon this street from their positions someplace inside Jobar.

There was an auxiliary underground tunnel leading to Zamalka area. the terrorists did not have enough time to complete its construction, though. When the SAA troops had arrived at this place, they found a prisoner, a man in a dugout here. Now, they are busy figuring out if that man was a prisoner soldier or perhaps one of the local residents caught captive by the militants. The man was exhausted. The militants here are known to have used local civilians as slave labor to construct their underground tunnels. It is not known yet what happens to all those labor slaves. Most probably, they end up killed by the militants.

 SAA soldier 1: “When we secured this house, we killed eight militants here. During the subsequent examination, we found this dugout and an exhausted man in it. He was sick and told us that we had been a SAA soldier and that he had been taken captive and had been forced to dig this tunnel.”

 SAA soldier 2: “We broke into this place and destroyed eight militants. After that, we discovered an imprisoned soldier in here. The militants had forced him to make a tunnel to Zamalka. We was very exhausted and ill. He immediately dispatched him to the hospital. We are going to get all the terrorists on our land.”

There was an improvised hospital of the militants. Fifteen meters away from here a prisoner was dying of starvation, while the terrorists were providing medical treatment to their fighters here. The doctor who was treating his patients must have forgotten about his Hippocratic Oath and made no efforts to alleviate condition of the prisoner.

Another militants’ tunnel was dug out under the street. The tunnel is now being used by the SAA troops. The militants had used this tunnel for covert personnel movements and weapons delivery.

SAA soldier: “When we had taken this passage, we killed three militants and freed four captive civilians here. They were used as slave labor to dig tunnels and foxholes.”

We had to be careful at the end of the tunnel as we were moving above the ground level before descending into the basement of the next adjacent house building. The militants had used these basements as storage rooms for weaponry and ammunition. The whole building was still under construction and the militants used plastic casks, built into the floor, as storage containers which proved to be an excellent way to stow away their weapons and ammunition. It was necessary, as the militants had stealthily accumulated their forces in Jobar before they struck the local militia groups in the back.

A few wooden planks were used as an improvised bridge across a trench five meters wide and it was still dangerous to walk them as the militant snipers in Zamalka were constantly firing at us. We took a longer way round. We took a detour across the basement. That was the place where SAA troops were holding their positions, virtually face-to-face with the enemy. Five meter distance separated them from the building in which the militants had taken their hold, too.

In this building, there were numerous traces of the militants’ presence a short time ago. Finally, we reached the top floors of the multistoried building. From this place, we could see Zamalka that still was in the hands of the militants. It was dangerous to keep popping around with my camera though, as the place was open to the militant sniper fire. The highway across the building could be seen clogged with burnt-out carcasses of truck trailers. That was how the militants had tried to block the thoroughfare.

In a distance, a ragtag group of militants on foot and in trucks had scurried past the SAA troops’ positions.       

ANNA-News Agency, Damascus