SYRIAN AND KURDISH FORCES CLASH
SYRIAN government forces on Sunday briefly captured four villages east of the Euphrates River in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour after rare clashes with US-backed Kurdish-led fighters, then lost the area in a counteroffensive by the Kurdish-led force.
The area close to the border with Iraq has been the site of recent clashes between the two sides that had been focusing on fighting the Islamic State extremist group.
IS had declared its caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq. Crossings into the east bank of the Euphrates in eastern Syria by government forces have been rare.
Hours later, Syrian state television reported airstrikes it described as a “new aggression”, with missiles targeting a number of military outposts in northern Syria.
Syrian TV reported early yesterday that the missiles targeted outposts in the Hama and Aleppo countryside. It did not say who fired the missiles or whether there were any casualties or damage.
The news comes less than two weeks after a similar report of airstrikes on government military installations in the central Homs region and the suburbs of Damascus. But the military later said a false alarm had set off air defence systems.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria through activists on the ground, reported explosions in the Hama countryside and Aleppo province resulting from missiles.