Syria regime enters IS-held town in ‘severe blow’ to militants
BEIRUT: Regime forces broke into the eastern town of Mayadeen, one of the Islamic State (IS) group’s last bastions in Syria, backed by Russian air raids taking a deadly toll on civilians.
Mayadeen, in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor, is seen as the militant group’s “security and military capital” in Syria and its loss would deal “a severe blow” to the militants, according to a Syrian military source.
Over the course of months of successive defeats, Mayadeen and nearby Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border had taken in IS fighters fleeing the battle to the north for Raqa city in the face of an offensive launched by US-backed Kurdish and Arab forces.
“With support from Russian aviation, regime forces entered Mayadeen yesterday and took control of several buildings in the west of the town,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
Mayadeen, which the militants have controlled since 2014, sits on the western bank of the Euphrates River, between provincial capital Deir Ezzor, where the militants still hold several districts, and the border with Iraq.
IS remains in control of half of Deir Ezzor, despite advances by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and a separate offensive against the militants by the Kurdish-Arab alliance.
The Observatory said the target of the regime advance was to recapture the al-Omar oilfield held by IS to the northeast of Mayadeen that was destroyed in US-led coalition airstrikes in 2015.
The militants had been drawing oil sale revenues from the field of between US$1.7mil (RM7.1mil) and US$5.1mil (RM21.5mil) a month, according to the coalition.
On another front, regime forces said on Friday that they had ended their military operations in the east of central province of Homs after “eliminating the last groups” of IS fighters from an area of 1,800sq km, the official Sana news agency reported.
The advances against IS in Deir Ezzor have cost a heavy civilian death toll from Russian and coalition air raids.
The Observatory said Russian airstrikes on Thursday night killed 14 people, including three children, fleeing across the Euphrates on rafts near Mayadeen.
Moscow has been carrying out relentless airstrikes in support of its ally Damascus, targeting both IS in Deir Ezzor and rival militants led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate in Idlib province in the northwest.
IS has seen its self-declared “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq shrink steadily over the past two years and has lost all but a few of its main hubs in both Arab states.
On Wednesday, another Russian airstrike killed 38 civilians trying to flee the fighting in Deir Ezzor, according to the Observatory.
The Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.
It has reported hundreds of civilians killed in anti-IS operations in Deir Ezzor and Raqa. On Tuesday, it said a US-led coalition strike in Raqa killed at least 18 civilians.
Russia has not acknowledged any civilian deaths from its strikes since it intervened in Syria in 2015, and dismisses the Observatory’s reporting as biased. — AFP