IS militants take Syrian town in Homs as fighting escalates

BEIRUT: IS militants drove Syrian government forces from a town in the west of the country on Sunday, as fighting looked set to intensify despite a flurry of international diplomacy and talks.

The militants’ advance came even as Russian warplanes and Syrian forces supported by them stepped up assaults against insurgents in west and northwest Syria, and the United States separately sought to increase pressure on IS. militants.

The fighting tempered any expectation of progress towards a political solution to the four-year civil war, with warring sides and their foreign backers refusing to back down in a conflict where the world’s major military powers except China are directly involved.

Talks between world powers in Vienna meanwhile adjourned with calls for a nationwide ceasefire but key differences remained between rivals backing opposing sides. In a fierce assault that began by detonating two suicide car bombs, IS militants took the town of Maheen in the southwest of Homs province from government forces, a group monitoring the war said.

Some 50 fighters on the government side were killed, and clashes raged afterwards on the outskirts of a nearby mostly Christian town, Sadad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

IS confirmed the advance, which brought it within 20 km (13 miles) of the north-south highway linking Damascus to Syria’s other main cities Homs, Hama and Aleppo.

– AFP TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION: A Syrian man checks the destruction following a reported airstrike by Syrian government forces on the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern edges of the capital Damascus, on Sunday.