On one of the slopes of Mount Qassioun, which dominates Damascus, a network of tunnels connects the military complex of the Republican Guard responsible for defending the Syrian capital to the presidential palace, noted an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent. who was able to enter this camp on Saturday. “We entered this enormous barracks of the Republican Guard after the liberation” from Damascus on December 8, Mohammad Abou Salim, a military official from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), at the head of the coalition that ousted President Bashar Al-Assad from power, told AFP.
“We found a vast network of tunnels, which reaches as far as the presidential palace”located on a nearby hill, he added. The AFP correspondent entered two bunkers comprising large rooms reserved for guard soldiers, equipped with telecommunications equipment, electricity, a ventilation system, and where weapons were stored. Other, more rudimentary tunnels are dug into the rock and house munitions.
In the huge Republican Guard camp, fighters practice shooting portraits of Bashar Al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who passed power to him upon his death. Tanks and cannons are lined up under stone canopies. A large number of empty barrels are lined up, and explosives are stored further away. “The regime used these barrels to bomb civilians in northern Syria”says Mohammad Abou Salim. The UN denounced the use by Bashar Al-Assad’s air force of barrel bombs against civilian areas held by his adversaries during the civil war.
