Mosul endgame
US-backed fighters take Daesh-held village outside Raqqa
Smoke billows in the Old City of Mosul on Monday during the offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the city from Daesh. A day after Iraq declared it had driven the terrorists from Mosul, Daesh chief Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was reported dead by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The US-led coalition said it could not verify the information.
Rebel groups shot down a Syrian government warplane yesterday near a ceasefire zone in the country’s south, the factions and a monitoring group said.
Two rebel groups that operate in southeast Syria, the Lions of the East Army and the Ahmad Al Abd Forces, issued a joint statement yesterday saying they had downed the aircraft.
“The plane was shot down and crashed in regime-controlled territory. We have no information on the pilot,” said Fares Al Munjed, communications head for the Ahmad Al Abd Forces.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor confirmed that the rebel groups had hit the plane near a village on the administrative border between the provinces of Rural Damascus and Sweida. Sweida province is part of a new ceasefire deal negotiated by the United States, Russia, and Jordan that went into effect on Sunday. The deal has brought relative quiet to most of the provinces covered — Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida — though outbreaks of violence have been reported.
Meanwhile, US-backed fighters said they have seized a village where Daesh had a training camp and base near their stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria.
The advance comes as the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, battles to oust Daesh from Raqqa, one of their last remaining bastions in Syria.
“The SDF has captured the village of Al Akeryshi east of the city (of Raqqa) and Daesh car bomb attacks attempting to take it back have failed,” the alliance said late on Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased monitor, said the village had been used by Daesh as both a military base and a training camp.