IS abducts over 400 in east Syria after deadly assault

BEIRUT: Militants from the Islamic State group have abducted more than 400 Syrian civilians after capturing new ground in a major assault on the city of Deir Ezzor that left dozens dead.

The attack comes despite a Russian air campaign targeting the group that began in September, and more than a year of strikes by a US-led coalition against the militants in Syria.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the IS had killed at least 135 people in the multi-front attack that began on Saturday.

The dead included 85 civilians and 50 regime fighters, according to the monitor, which said today that the IS had also kidnapped more than 400 civilians from captured territory.

“Those abducted, all of whom are Sunnis, include women, children and family members of proregime fighters,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

He said they had been taken to areas under the IS control in the west of Deir Ezzor province and to the border with Raqa province - the main the IS stronghold in Syria - to the northwest.

The monitor said at least 42 IS fighters had been killed in the attack, adding that fighting was ongoing on Sunday, with regime forces backed by Russian air strikes trying to recapture lost ground. It added that regime forces were bringing additional troops and military equipment from elsewhere in the city to the battlefront.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said at least 300 civilians, “most of them women, children and elderly people,” had been killed in the assault. It denounced the deaths as a “massacre”.

The IS assault puts the group in control of around 60% of Deir Ezzor city, which is capital of the surrounding province of the same name, an oil-rich region that borders Iraq.

The jihadist group already controls most of the province, but regime forces have clung onto part of the city and a neighbouring air base despite repeated IS attacks.

If confirmed, the death toll in the assault would be one of the highest in a single attack by IS, though the militants have carried out mass murders before.