Syrian troops recapture town near Damascus

The Syrian troops Friday recaptured a town in the eastern countryside of Damascus, as part of the Syrian forces' wide-scale offensive to dislodge the rebels from the eastern rim of the capital, a media report said.

The Syrian troops' recapture of Htaitet Jarash town came in tandem with the troops' advancement in Damascus' eastern suburb of Jobar, where intense battles have been raging for over a week, Xinhua reported.

The recapture of Htaitet Jarash enables the Syrian troops to cut the rebels' supply lines between rebel-held towns of Jisrin and Zibdin in the eastern countryside of Damascus.

Meanwhile, the pro-government Sham FM radio said that the Syrian troops called for reinforcement to confront rebel groups that infiltrated the al-Kabbas neighborhood in eastern Damascus on Friday morning.

It said that armed militants infiltrated al-Kabbas from adjacent rebel-held Ain Tarma suburb and locked civilians in their homes there after clashing with Syrian troops. Five Syrian soldiers were killed during the clashes, it added.

Over 191,000 people were reportedly killed in Syria between March 2011 and April 2014, according to an updated UN study released last month.