IS seizes Syrian town
BEIRUT, Oct 1, (Agencies): The Islamic State group on Sunday seized a town in central Syria known as a symbol of religious coexistence in a surprise attack against regime forces, a monitor said.
The jihadists took control of Al-Qaryatain in the central province of Homs early on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Violent clashes broke out after the jihadists sneaked in, the Britain-based Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Government troops had surrounded the town, where several Christian families are believed to be living, he said.
Al-Qaryatain was home to some 30,000 people before Syria’s war broke out in 2011, 900 of them Christians.
Regime forces recaptured Al-Qaryatain in April 2016 after eight months of jihadist control.
In early August 2015, IS abducted 270 Christians from the town, transporting them around 90 kms (55 miles) away deep in the Syria desert and locking them up in an underground dungeon. They were freed 25 days later.
The same month, IS destroyed parts of a monastery in the town and reduced a fifth-century mud brick church to rubble using explosives and bulldozers.
this week the jihadists launched an assault on government positions in Syria’s vast Badiya desert, killing at least 128 regime troops.
Syria’s war killed at least 3,000 people including 955 civilians in September, the deadliest month of the conflict this year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said on Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and millions displaced since the war erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
It has since spiralled into a complex conflict involving world powers, with Russia-backed regime forces and a US-supported alliance separately battling the Islamic State jihadist group in the country.
The 955 civilians killed in September included 207 children, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.
“More than 70 percent of the civilians were killed in regime and Russian air strikes, or in air raids of the international coalition” fighting IS, the monitor’s head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Backed by Russian air strikes, the forces of Syria’s President Bashar alAssad are pressing a battle to retake IS-controlled areas in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
A US-led international coalition has been providing air support to a Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, also fighting the jihadists in their former northern bastion of Raqa city and in Deir Ezzor.
The number of people killed in September was higher because of increased fighting and “intensified air raids of the international coalition and Russia against jihadist bastions in the north and east of Syria, but also due to increased Russian and regime strikes on rebel-held areas,” Abdel Rahman said.
Russian and regime warplanes have in the past two weeks increased their strikes on the northwestern province of Idlib, which is largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate.