Syrian President Assad visits army positions in Eastern Ghouta — state media

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Sunday visited army positions in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta. (Photo: Courtesy of Syrian Presidency Telegram account)

BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Sunday visited army positions in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta, the president’s Telegram account said.
“In the line of fire in Eastern Ghouta ... President Assad with heroes of the Syrian Arab army,” a caption said.
It is the Syrian leader's first trip to the former rebel enclave outside Damascus in years.
Syria state television broadcast photos of the president dressed in a shirt and jacket surrounded by soldiers, some perched on a tank behind him, in an unspecified part of Eastern Ghouta.
The photographs were taken in a street lined with damaged building fronts with a couple of parked tanks.
Rebels have held out in Eastern Ghouta since 2012, but a regime assault in the last month has retaken more than 80 percent of the former opposition bastion, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says.