Syria army rescues 19 Daesh hostages

The Syrian regime’s army has freed a group of 19 women and children who were abducted by Daesh in July, Syrian state television reported yesterday.

The extremist group, which lost most of its territory in Syria last year, seized about 30 people when it rampaged through Sweida from a desert enclave outside the city, killing more than 200 people and detonating suicide vests.

The hostages were freed northeast of the desert city of Palmyra after the army fought with Daesh militants in what state television described as “a precise operation”. It did not say when the fighting took place.

Six other hostages from the same group were freed in October. A war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said in August another of the hostages had been beheaded.

Sweida, which is under regime rule, has a mainly Druze religious community.

Seven years into Syria’s civil war, President Bashar Al Assad’s regime controls more than half the country with military backing from Russia and Iran.

Daesh still controls a small area in the far east of Syria and a patch of desert in the south.