Army breaches 3-year siege on key eastern city

BEIRUT — Syrian troops and allied forces reached the eastern city of Deir el-Zour on Tuesday, breaching a 3-yearold Islamic State siege on parts of the contested city near the Iraqi border, the army command and a war monitoring group said.

Lifting the siege on Deir el-Zour, parts of which have been ruled by the extremist group since January 2015, marks another victory for President Bashar Assad, whose forces have been advancing on several fronts against Islamic State and other insurgents over the past year.

It also puts an end to a humanitarian crisis for the estimated 70,000 people who survived on erratic air drops of food and supplies during the 32-month siege. Syrian state media said dozens of trucks carrying aid are ready to move in.

The army command said in a statement that reaching Deir el-Zour marks “a strategic turn in the war against terrorism,” and that the city will be used as a “launching pad to expand military operations in the region.”

Syrian state TV said troops reached the western outskirts of the city and broke the siege after Islamic State defenses collapsed. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also reported that troops had breached the siege.

Islamic State has suffered a series of major setbacks in recent months. Iraqi forces drove the extremists from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in June, and U.S.backed Syrian forces have seized more than half of the Syrian city of Raqqa, once the group’s self-styled capital.

Syrian troops and allied militiamen, backed by Russia’s air force, have for months been advancing toward Deir el-Zour, the provincial capital of the oil-rich province of the same name.

Deir el-Zour is in the Euphrates River Valley, which stretches all the way to the Iraqi border, taking in several towns and villages, and is the largest remaining Islamic State stronghold. The extremists still control around 60 percent of the city, and it could take Assad’s forces months to drive them out.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Russian warship in the Mediterranean fired cruise missiles early Tuesday toward Islamic State targets near the city. The ministry said it targeted a fortified area around the town of el-Shola, where most of the militants are believed to hail from Russia and former Soviet republics.