The Nusra Front closed on Saturday a long tunnel running between the city of Harasta in Eastern Ghouta and the Barzeh neighborhood in Damascus. The tunnel was built by the Islamic Army in order to deliver food and medicines to the people besieged by the regime in Eastern Ghouta.
Activists said that the Islamic Army had finished digging the tunnel 10 days ago, which cost millions of Syran Pounds and took months of hard work.
The tunnel helped, in the first few days, to transfer dozens of families originally from Qaboun and Barzeh to their neighborhoods which are existing in a truce state with the regime, and where food and life supplies are available at cheap prices. The tunnel also helped to smuggle large amounts of humanitarian aid and food to Harasta, Douma, Zamalka, Arbin and Ain Tarma and other besieged cities experiencing difficult humanitarian conditions.
While the Islamic Army kept the tunnel secret, Abou Turab al-Urduni (the Nusra emir for Barzeh and Qaboun) wrote on his Facebook page that "Nusra has seized the tunnel to confront Zahran Alloush and his followers".
Activists close to the Islamic Army accused the Nusra Front of closing the tunnel to maintain the armistice agreement with the regime in Barzeh and Qaboun, because this truce will help Nusra to continue its propaganda campaign and "brainwash the youth in the region to spread their fundamentalist ideas, and turn them into jihadists and separate people into apostates and infidels."
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
