Syrian regime’s army starts assault on last Daesh stronghold
BEIRUT/WASHINGTON: Syrian regime forces and its allies began an assault on the largest remaining stronghold of Daesh in Syria and Iraq on Wednesday, a local Lebanese TV channel reported, signaling the imminent fall of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
Daesh has been all but destroyed over the past two years, remaining only in Bu Kamal in Syria, Rawa in Iraq, in a few neighboring villages and patches of desert, and some isolated pockets elsewhere.
At the height of its power in 2015, it ruled over an expanse of the two countries, eradicating their border, printing money, imposing draconian laws and plotting attacks across the world.
On Wednesday, the army and its allies surrounded Bu Kamal and started to enter it, the television channel said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, reported that Iraqi militias had crossed into Syria to join the assault, but they denied it.
Despite its losses, Daesh still has a territorial presence in Libya and elsewhere, and many governments expect it to remain a threat even after it loses the caliphate it declared from Mosul, Iraq, in 2014.
It has already carried out a series of guerrilla operations in both Iraq and in Syria, and it has continued to inspire lone militants to attack civilian targets in the West.
In Syria, the end of major battle operations against Daesh may only prefigure a new phase of the war, as the rival forces, which have seized territory from the terrorists square off.
The Syrian regime’s army, alongside its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, and backed by Iran and Russia, has seized swathes of central and eastern Syria in an advance against Daesh this year.
Russian official media have in recent weeks reported a surge of strategic bombing and cruise missile strikes on Daesh targets in eastern Syria as the army advanced.
A US-backed coalition has supported a rival campaign in Syria by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias that have pushed Daesh from much of the country’s north and east.
US mocks Syria joining
climate deal
The US mocked Syria’s arrival in the Paris Agreement on climate change on Tuesday.
Syria had earlier told UN climate talks in Bonn that it will become the 197th country to join the accord, making President Donald Trump’s government the only one planning to pull out. But State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert fiercely dismissed suggestions that this means that Trump’s “America First” policy has in practice meant “America Alone.”
“I find it ironic that the government of Syria, OK, would say that it wants to be involved, and that it cares so much about climate and things like carbon dioxide gas,” she told reporters.
“If the government of Syria cared so much about what was put in the air, then it would not be gassing its own people,” she said, referring to the Damascus regime’s brutal civil war tactics.