BAGHDAD: The Syrian army and allied militia clashed with rebels near Damascus on Sunday, threatening to disrupt planned repairs to a pumping station that supplies most of the capital’s water, a war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army and the allied Lebanese militia Hezbollah had made some gains against rebels in the Wadi Barada area. Heavy fighting reached the outskirts of the Ain al-Fija town, where the waterworks is located, the British-based war monitor reported.
Artillery shelling by government forces killed nine people and wounded at least 20 others in the nearby Deir Qanoun village, it said. A local media office for opposition activists said the shelling hit a center for displaced people.
Wadi Barada, a mountainous valley northwest of Damascus, has become a major battlefront in the Syrian war, and the damage to the facility has caused severe water shortages in the capital since the beginning of the year.
The governor of the Damascus countryside province said on Friday that engineers had entered Ain al-Fija to repair the water station, as part of a wider agreement that included the departure of some rebels from Wadi Barada and a settlement with others who would remain there.
But the plan was derailed on Saturday evening, after armed men killed the head of a negotiation team who was overseeing the agreement and repairs, the Observatory said. The warring sides accused each other of assassinating the official, who had only assumed his role a day before. A military media unit run by Hezbollah said the army captured some positions overlooking Ain al-Fija on Saturday, after taking nearby villages in recent days and edging closer towards the water facility.—Agencies
