...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...(Army of Islam) violated the ceasefire agreement on Tuesday afternoon to launch a new offensive against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the East Ghouta region of rural Damascus.
The Islamist group began the assault by storming the Syrian Arab Army's defenses at the al-Riyhan Farms; this would result in a series of intense firefights that would last until midnight.
Despite their best efforts to infiltrate the Syrian Arab Army's defenses, Jaish al-Islam was forced to retreat after sustaining significant casualties during the intense battle on Tuesday night.
According to an al-Masdar News correspondent in Damascus, Jaish al-Islam suffered over 20 casualties during the failed assault, while the Syrian Arab Army's 105th Brigade of the Republican Guard only reported 3 deaths.