DAMASCUS — Syrian forces carried out their fiercest assault on the rebel stronghold of Jobar in Damascus since the start of the three-year war, conducting at least 27 air strikes on Tuesday, according to activists and rights groups.

The government is trying to retake Jobar after the capture of several rebel-held areas around the center of the capital this summer, including the town of Mleiha just outside Damascus on August 14.

Jobar was seized by armed rebels over a year ago and the area has since endured ongoing ground shelling by government missile batteries located in Damascus city center. 

State-run television said the army had gained ground in Jobar, located on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, and aired footage of rubble and tunnels it said had been used by rebels. It also showed multiple explosions and smoke clouds coming from crumbling high-rise buildings.

Although insurgents have been prevented from taking central Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are worried they will reach it by digging tunnels from the sprawling suburbs and outlying towns under their control.

Militants active there include the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al Nusra, along with various Syrian rebel brigades.

Anti-Assad activists based in Jobar said the district has sustained fierce ground and aerial bombardment for several days, culminating in the worst day yet on Tuesday.

One activist in Jobar said he saw three siblings wounded by shrapnel, one of whom later died.

“Shrapnel hit the youngest and the eldest brothers, 8 and 14 years old, wounding their legs. The middle child, Adel Shaaban, who was 11, was hit in the head and killed,” he told Reuters by Skype.

Residents in central Damascus, barely a 20 minute drive to Jobar, say they have been hearing warplanes buzz in the sky and unusually fierce ground shelling for several days.

“These sounds are nothing new to us anymore, but the past few days have been particularly bad. My living room shakes each time they fire,” said Nada, a resident of central Damascus who withheld her last name.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collects information from all sides of the conflict and verifies victims by name, said there were several injuries reported due to the fighting in Jobar.

A projectile from the fighting in the Syrian civil war struck the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday and Israeli forces responded by attacking a Syrian army position, the military said.

In a statement, the military said it appeared the shooting from Syria was “errant fire” from battles between rebels and government forces.

Such fighting has often spilled over into Israeli-held parts of the Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War.

The military said that in response to the latest fire from the Syrian side of the frontier, “the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) targeted a Syrian army position and hits were confirmed.”

It did not say what type of attack Israel carried out. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was an air strike on a Syrian army base on the Golan. There were no immediate reports of casualties from either side.

Islamist militants last week overran a U.N.-controlled crossing point on the “disengagement line” that has separated Israelis from Syrians on the Golan Heights since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The fighters then turned against U.N. blue helmets from a peacekeeping force that has patrolled the zone since 1974. After 45 Fijians were captured on Thursday, 72 Filipinos were besieged by militants at two other locations for two days before the peacekeepers escaped.

The militants, believed to be part of Nusra Front, are still holding the 45 Fijian members of the United Nations’ UNDOF Golan Heights force.

On Sunday, an Israeli Patriot missile shot down what the military described as a Syrian drone over the strategic plateau.

U.N aid increases

A record 4.1 million people in Syria received food rations in August due to more convoys being able to cross front lines and borders from Turkey and Jordan, the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) said on Tuesday.

“We are reaching more people every day with urgently needed food assistance – many of them have been going hungry for months,” Muhannad Hadi, WFP’s regional emergency coordinator for the Syria crisis, said in a statement.

Over the last six weeks, WFP and partner agencies have crossed front lines to reach more than 580,000 people, over four times the 137,000 reached in the preceding six weeks, it said.

The U.N. Security Council authorized the movement of U.N. aid through four border crossings in July.

That ended more than a year of aid paralysis caused by Damascus denying permission for U.N. staff to cross borders into rebel-held areas. Although Syrian forces did not control those areas, the U.N. said it could not infringe Syrian sovereignty.

“Since July 25, a total of five cross-border convoys, via the Bab Al Salam crossing from Turkey and Al Ramtha from Jordan, carried food rations including rice, lentils, oil, pasta, bulgur, canned food, wheat flour, beans, salt and sugar for 69,500 people in the hard-to-reach areas of Aleppo, Idlib, Quneitra and Deraa governorates,” the WFP statement said.

The improved access for humanitarian aid helped boost the number getting food rations from 3.7 million in July. However, WFP has never yet managed to reach its monthly target for feeding Syrians, which was 4.25 million in August, about a fifth of the pre-war population of the country.

WFP says it needs to raise $35 million per week to meet the food needs of Syrians affected by the conflict, including the 3 million refugees in neighboring countries.