DAMASCUS, March 4 (Xinhua) -- Syria's national TV said Sunday that the rebels in the capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta area are "collapsing" as a result of the Syrian military offensive in that area.
The state TV announced the Syrian army's capture of the town of Nashabiyeh and other towns in Eastern Ghouta, which had been under the control of the al-Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee, or the Nusra Front.
The army has also captured the strategic Tal Ferzat hilltop, after isolating the rebels' tunnels in that area, said the report, adding that the Syrian army is carrying out a tactic of splitting the areas in Eastern Ghouta into sectors to capture them one at a time.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Syrian government forces' have captured 10 percent of Eastern Ghouta as part of the wide-scale military assault on the rebel-held areas in the sprawling Eastern Ghouta in the eastern countryside of Damascus.
The UK-based watchdog group said the Syrian warplanes are heavily targeting the town of Mesraba, as a prelude to launching an assault to capture that area in Eastern Ghouta.
Other activists reported airstrikes by the Syrian warplanes on areas in Eastern Ghouta, quoting the commanders of the Islam Army rebels as saying that the rebels in Eastern Ghouta carried out overnight operations in the Marj area in Eastern Ghouta against the advancing Syrian troops, killing 150 of them.
This comes as the Russian-supported partial humanitarian pause in Eastern Ghouta has entered its sixth day with no civilians leaving, with the state media in Syria blaming the rebels for preventing the civilians from leaving.
Also, no humanitarian aid convoys entered Eastern Ghouta during the six-day-long humanitarian pause.
A day earlier, Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin, a representative of the Russian center for reconciliation of opposing sides in Syria, said that a report of the Syrian intelligence had revealed that the Nusra Front is plotting a provocation in East Ghouta through preparing to attack a UN relief convoy, which was scheduled to enter the Duma district in the northern part of the East Ghouta pocket on Sunday.
