The commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the operation is targeting Daesh and al-Nusra terrorists in Yarmouk Camp and the adjoining al-Hajar al-Aswad area.
The area is much smaller than the eastern Ghouta region that Syrian government forces recently recovered in an offensive. The source told Reuters that preparatory shelling of the militant enclave had started on Tuesday morning.
The government is also set to recover another rebel enclave south of Damascus around the town of Beit Sahm, the commander said, though this would happen through an agreement with the government by which fighters would leave for Idlib.
“The lists of militants who will go on the buses toward Idlib are being gathered,” the commander said.
Over the past few months, Syrian forces have made sweeping gains against Takfiri terrorists who have lately increased their acts of violence across the country following a series of defeats on the ground.
On Saturday, Syrian soldiers entered the town of Douma for clean-up operations days after they fully retook the entire suburban area near Damascus from foreign-backed militants.
Douma was the last militant stronghold in the Eastern Ghouta region, which for years served as a launch pad for deadly terror attacks against civilians in the Syrian capital.
The Douma liberation came after the withdrawal of the members of the so-called Jaish al-Islam terrorist group under a Russia-mediated agreement with the government.