4 killed as rockets rain down on Syrian capital: monitor

BEIRUT - Agence France-Presse

The attack comes two days after Zahran Alloush, head of the rebel Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), warned on Twitter that his forces would launch a 'rocket campaign against the capital' from Sunday. AFP Photo

 Four civilians were killed and dozens wounded when rebels fired a barrage of rockets and mortar rounds Jan. 25 at central Damascus, a monitoring group said.
      
The rebel attack came two days after they threatened to retaliate for deadly air raids by the Syrian regime against an opposition-held area on the edge of the capital.
      
"Four civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded, as rebels in the Eastern Ghouta area fired more than 43 locally made rockets and mortar rounds at several areas of central Damascus," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
      
Among the areas hit were the Al-Maliki and Mazzeh neighbourhoods, as well as Arnus and Sabaa Bahrat squares, said the Britain-based group.
      
AFP journalists in Sabaa Bahrat square could hear the blasts, while ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the area.
      
State news agency SANA said the army fired back at the source, blaming rebels in the Eastern Ghouta area, without giving any initial report of casualties or naming the residential areas hit.
      
The attack comes two days after Zahran Alloush, head of the rebel Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), warned on Twitter that his forces would launch a "rocket campaign against the capital" from Sunday.
      
"The rockets' brigade is preparing for a rocket campaign against the capital, which will see rockets rain down every day... in retaliation for the regime's savage air raids... against our people in the... Eastern Ghouta area," Alloush wrote.
      
Government aircraft on Friday carried out a string of deadly raids against rebel-held Hammuriyeh in the besieged Eastern Ghouta area, located east of Damascus.
      
The Observatory said 56 people were killed, among them six children. Only five of the dead were fighters, said the group close to the Syrian opposition that relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground.
      
Alloush's Jaysh al-Islam is the most powerful rebel group in Eastern Ghouta.
      
Tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the area suffer extreme shortages of food and medicine, activists say.
      
Syria's war began as a peaceful revolt demanding democratic change, but later morphed into a brutal civil war after President Bashar al-Assad's regime unleashed a massive crackdown against dissent.
      
More than 200,000 people have been killed since March 2011, and half the population has been forced to flee their homes.