*TEHRAN – Syria’s army and its allies recently managed to foil a majorUS-Israeli plot for facilitating the transfer of thousands of terrorists tothe Arab country’s Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, a Syrian militarysource said.*
Speaking to Tasnim on Saturday on condition of anonymity, the source saidIsraeli warplanes had been tasked with pounding the positions of the Syrianarmy in the suburbs of Damascus in an attempt to pave the way for theso-called Jaish al-Islam Takfiri terrorists to reach the towns ofal-Nashabiyah and Outaya in Eastern Ghouta towards the eastern QalamounMountains.
Some other 5,000 armed terrorists based in the town of al-Tanf insoutheastern Syria were also supposed to join Jaish al-Islam militants inEastern Ghouta under the cover of US strikes, he added.
The US-Israeli plot against the Syrian government was nipped in the budafter Syrian forces and their allies took timely action, deployed theirtroops to the two directions and pushed them back, the source further said.
Angered by the defeat, the militants are targeting civilians with mortarrounds, the Syrian source said, stressing that the Arab country’s militaryis determined to eliminate the terrorists operating around the capital onceand for all.
Eastern Ghouta has witnessed renewed violence in the past few days, withterrorists mounting repeated mortar attacks on the Syrian capital in theface of an imminent rout.
The UN Security Council on Friday delayed a vote on a demand for a 30-dayceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta district
The 24-hour delay followed a flurry of last-minute negotiations on the textdrafted by Sweden and Kuwait after Russia, a veto-holding ally of SyrianPresident Bashar al-Assad, proposed new amendments on Friday.
A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, theUnited States, Britain and France to be adopted.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed to the ceasefire proposalfor Eastern Ghouta and argued that the initiative fails to provide anyguarantee that militants will stop the ongoing violence.
“There are (no) answers to the questions of the guarantees that militantswill obey this humanitarian pause and that they will not continue shellingthe residential districts of Damascus. These guarantees are not given tous,” Lavrov said.
On Thursday, Lavrov expressed Moscow’s readiness to consider the ceasefirein Syria, but only if it does not cover the Daesh, the al-Nusra Front andother terrorist groups that “conduct systematic shelling of the residentialquarters of Damascus.”