On February 18, 2017, the Syrian regime initiated an extensive military campaign against the opposition-held parts of Damascus’s eastern neighborhoods (Mainly al Qaboun and Tishreen neighborhoods), in which “Pheel” rockets, mortar shells, and chemical weapons were used.
The campaign’s goal was to drain even more of these neighborhoods’ capabilities by killing their residents, destroying their buildings, and shattering their resources in order to coerce these neighborhoods into agreeing to a settlement that would result in displacing the residents and making them IDPs in a scenario that we have seen time after time throughout the Syrian region. On Saturday, May 13, 2017, it was agreed that armed opposition fighters and their families are to flee to Idlib governorate. 4100 individuals fled in two groups on May 14 and May 15.
we noticed that Syrian regime forces incorporated an improvised mechanism to their indiscriminate weapon arsenal, which they have been using, as we noticed since early-April 2017, primarily in al Qaboun and Tishreen neighborhoods. These mechanisms came to be called by the local residents as “explosive hoses” which are:
Plastic hoses that are loaded with TNT or C-4, could be as long as 80m. These hoses are fired from military vehicles such as the Russian mine-clearing vehicle UR-77. The typical use of these hoses is to detonate mines, and they cause huge destruction, spanning areas of tens of meters. The Syrian regime uses these hoses to shell residential neighbourhoods
