President Bashar al-Assad’s forces bombarded the southeast of Damascus with air strikes and artillery yesterday to try to dislodge rebel fighters who have gained a foothold in the Syrian capital, opposition activists said.

A Middle East diplomat following the military situation described battles in and around Damascus as a “major engagement”, with fighting going back and forth between the two sides.

“The opposition is hitting Damascus from a multiple of directions and the regime is trying to stop it,” he said.

Jets bombed Jobar, a neighbourhood adjacent to the main Abbasid Square, and the suburb of Daraya on the road to Jordan to the south, sources in the capital said.

The two areas are part of interconnected Sunni Muslim districts in and around Damascus that have been at the forefront of the 22-month uprising against four decades of family rule by Assad and his father.

Rebels entered Jobar last week after breaching the army’s defence lines at the ring road and overrunning several army and pro-Assad militia positions.

The road, a supply line for elite army units in the centre of the city, separates the capital from the mostly rebel-held expanse of Sunni towns and suburbs known as eastern Ghouta.

“By being all over Jobar, the rebels are at striking distance in Damascus, but the big question is whether they will be able to hold it,” said an activist from the Damascus Media Centre opposition monitoring group.

To the southwest, near the main highway to Jordan, heavy bombardment was reported in Daraya, where the army advanced in the last few days, breaking a two-month rebel hold.

Rebels remain entrenched in the south of the district near the main highway leading to Jordan, said Abu Hamza, a member of the Daraya Local Council, which has been administering the suburb since it was taken over by the opposition.

“Daraya is being hit with cluster bombs, vacuum bombs and rockets and we are receiving people for treatment from suffocation in the field hospital.”