Refuge in remaining IS territory?

With its territory across Syria and Iraq rapidly shrinking, IS is now concentrating its resources in the Euphrates River valley that lies along the SyriaIraq border, experts say.

“For a long time now the centre of gravity for the Islamic State has been shifting ... towards places like Mayadeen and Albu Kamal,” in the east of Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, said Winter.

“IS has very systematically been bulking up its infrastructure and its population in these places,” he added.

He said IS had likely ensured that large numbers of fighters moved to these areas well before they were surrounded in places like Raqqa and Mosul.

That means now that the fight for places like Mayadeen and Albu Kamal could be “surprisingly ferocious,” he

said.

BEIRUT:

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The Islamic State group on Tuesday claimed a bomb attack at a police station in the Syrian capital Damascus a day earlier that killed at least 17 people.

In a statement circulated on its social media accounts, the group said three of its fighters armed with guns, grenades and explosives were involved in the attack in the southern neighbourhood of Midan on Monday.

The Syrian interior ministry said on Monday that the attack involved two suicide bombers, one of whom managed to penetrate the police station and reach the first floor before his explosives detonated.

But a monitor reported a third explosion involved a car bomb outside the police station, and the IS claim also referred to the third attacker blowing himself up separately from the other two.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least 17 people were killed in the attack, among them 13 police officers.