On March 21, an intense fighting continued between the Syrian army and the joint militant forces led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham in the Qabun industrial area in eastern Damascus.
As the militants’ attempt to seize this important industrial area and to link up the militant-held Qabun pocket with the militant-held region of Eastern Ghouta entered the third day, the issue of the casualties suffered by the sides became very important.
Thus, according to pro-militant sources between 70 and 90 members of the Syrian army and its allies had been killed and over 100 pro-goovernment fighters had been injured since the start of the clashes. The majority of these casualties were suffered by government forces as a result of attacks of suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.
The number of killed pro-government fighters is at least partly confirmed by pro-government media activists. The official pro-government narrative denied such a high number of casualties.
In turn, according to pro-government sources, between 90 and 110 members of militant groups (mostly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) were killed in failed attempts to seize the Qabun industrial area.
While the provided numbers cannot be confirmed independently because the sides hide their casualties on a constant basis, they allow to evaluate the intensity of the ongoing clashes in eastern Damascus and the importance of the area for government forces and their opponents.
Syrian troops are at the frontline in the Qabun area (source):
Militants deployed for the advance:
These are real warriors , they don’t hide their faces and are big spirited enough to smile .
as far as i can see, their morale seems pretty high at the moment.
Those militant casualty numbers need to go higher and SAA numbers lower!!!
Syria needs to form an effective fighting force which concentrates solely on tunnels. Still too many major suprise attacks from forces underground. Imagine they need unique technology for locating these tunnels.
Actually Jihadist may have launched this offensive because their tunnels where destroyed by a specialized SAA force. No more supplies! They are already using this seismic technology.
Tunnels are big problem.I remember how the rebels killed 50 soldiers in Aleppo when they detonated tunnel which was under the building where the soldiers were .This meant that the rebels have been moving into goverment held West Aleppo for years and nobody knew this. And you know from where they learned such tactic – Hamas.And Hamas was taught by Hezbollah
since there are no civilians in the tunnels, but only rats and maggots, I’d avoid try sweeping them and pump them with incendiaries, thermobarics and even chemicals. Seriously though, there is sounding equipment that can locate these caves- it’s been around for tens of years, nothing new.
Those losses are not sustainable, I hope that the Syrians try to figure out how to fix this tactically and ask the Russians for help if it’s a matter of needing specialized training or equipment.
They are sustainable .Damascus have around 3.5 million people. You need to mobilize only 10 percent of them even less.
they are sustainable, especially since they don’t represent an average but just a spike in an intense urban combat event. Also, don’t forget that it’s the jihadists that are reporting those casualties they are known to inflate numbers to suit their propaganda even tenfold or more.