EAST SYRIA DEATH TOLL SOARS AFTER MASSIVE IS ATTACK

AFP, 26TH NOVEMBER, 2018- Us-backed fighters in Syria suffered record fatalities in an assault by the Islamic State group, a war monitor said Monday, as holdout jihadists kept up a fierce defence of their last Syrian redoubt.

It said a total of more than 200 people have been killed since around 500 IS fighters burst out of the fog shrouding the area in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq to launch their deadly assault on Friday.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 92 of the dead were fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led ground units that have spearheaded the Us-backed fight against IS in Syria.

At least 61 jihadists and 51 civilians, mostly their relatives, also died in the violence which saw Us-led coalition air strikes help the SDF recover positions it had briefly lost.

The jihadists used suicide bombers, suicide commandos and sleeper cells in the countryside around their bastion of Hajin to inflict maximum damage, it said.

“It’s the largest number of SDF fighters killed (by IS) in a single battle since it was founded” in 2015, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF, an alliance of fighters from the main Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units and anti-jihadist Arab fighters, rarely releases full casualty figures.