ISIL regains Syrian stronghold days after its liberation

ISIL militants regained control of Albu Kamal, their last stronghold in Syria, after Iranian-backed militias who claimed to have captured the city a few days earlier were ambushed and forced to retreat, tribal leaders, residents and a war monitor said yesterday.

Fighters from Lebanese Shiite group Hizbollah in Syria, who joined forces with Iraqi Shiite fighters crossing the border into Syria, were taken by surprise by militants hiding in tunnels in the heart of the city they said they had taken last Wednesday, they said.

The Shiite fighters had launched a ground offensive on the city, in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, after months of mainly Russian heavy bombardment of the city that killed dozens of civilians and caused widespread destruction.

“ISIL militants began surprise attacks with suicide bombers and rockets after the Iranian militias were duped that Daesh had left the city,” said Qahtan Ghanam Al Ali, a tribal leader.

The Syrian army had on Thursday declared victory over ISIL. It said the capture of Albu Kamal marked the collapse of the militants’ reign in the region.

The army made no mention of the loss of Albu Kamal, but Hizbollah said intense aerial strikes hit ISIL hideouts in the western countryside of the city.

The offensive was led by forces from Hizbollah fighting in Syria alongside an array of Iraqi and Afghan Shiite militias, a commander in that alliance said.

“Militant attacks led to big losses in the ranks of fighters supporting the regime,” the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Albu Kamal, a supply and communications centre for the hardline militants between Syria and Iraq, was a big prize for the Iranian-backed militias.

The militants’ control of the city and its sister border town of Al Qaim on the Iraqi side had disrupted the Baghdad-Damascus motorway – a major arms conduit between Iran and its Syrian ally.

On Sunday, jets believed to be Russian intensified a third day of bombing of Albu Kamal, with at least 50 civilians – mostly women and children – killed since Friday, the monitor said.

In retaliation for their losses, Iranian militias that were forced to withdraw shelled villages east of the city where hundreds of families who fled Albu Kamal had found temporary refuge, the observatory said.

In one air strike on the town of Sukariya, east of the city, 30 people were killed, mostly women and children, two former residents of the city said. Other air strikes hit the villages of Marshada and Sousa near the river crossing where hundreds of civilians were targeted as they fled in small boats, they said.