SYRIAN'S ASSAULT SUFFERINGS

Fierce fighting in Syria's Ghouta as Assad presses assault.

BEIRUT : The Syrian army and rebel groups engaged in fierce battles early on Sunday on a critical front in eastern Ghouta where government advances-

Have in effect splintered the  insurgent enclave  into three, a war monitor said.

More than 1,100 civilians have been killed in the onslaught on the biggest stronghold near Damascus since it began three weeks ago with a withering bombardment, said the Syrian Observatory for  Human Rights.

It said there was intense fighting on several fronts accompanied by a government artillery barrage, continuous raids and attacks by helicopters.

State television on Saturday broadcast from the town of Mesraba after the army captured it, driving a wedge deep inside insurgent territory that left the major towns of Douma and Harasta all but cut off.

Rebels said the towns had not been entirely cut off from each other, or from the larger rebel area to their south, but the-

Observatory said the army fire on the roads  'linking'  these three places meant the enclave had been split.

Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam, the two largest rebel groups in eastern  Ghouta, have vowed to resist the army's offensives, but they have lost more than-

Half  the enclave's  area in two weeks of ground fighting. [Agencies].