BEIRUT: The IS group on Saturday launched one of its fiercest assaults yet on the besieged Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, leaving more than 30 regime fighters and militants dead. The brutal attack — on a day that saw many outbreaks of violence across Syria — came as the political opposition said it “supported” upcoming peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana. The negotiations will attempt to bring an end to the nearly six-year war by building on a fragile truce agreement. But IS is excluded from the deal, brokered by Turkey and Russia.
Unleashing a wave of suicide attacks, rockets, and tunnel bombs, IS killed at least 12 government forces and two civilians in Deir Ezzor on Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The British-based monitoring group said 20 militants were killed in fierce air raids by Syrian and allied warplanes on the city, where around 200,000 people have lived under IS siege since early 2015.
IS has sought to overrun the entire city, including the key nearby military airport.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said Saturday’s attack was the “most violent” assault mounted by IS on the city in more than a year.
“Daesh is amassing its forces to attack Deir Ezzor and breach government lines,” a Syrian military source said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
He said militants had aimed to cut the route between the airport and the city, but that the government’s counter-attack had stopped IS.
Fresh raids on Saturday in the town of Maarat Masrin in the northwest province of Idlib killed eight people, most of them civilians, the Observatory said.
A day earlier, three civilians —including a child — were killed in strikes on the nearby town of Orum al Joz, Abdel Rahman said.
Idlib province is controlled by a rebel alliance led by Fateh al Sham Front, which changed its name from Al Nusra Front after breaking ties with Al Qaeda last year.
New clashes also broke out on Saturday in Wadi Barada— the main source of water for Damascus.
Water supplies from the area to around 5.5 million people in the capital and its outskirts have been cut since December 22 because of fighting.
Rebels and government troops had reached a local agreement on Friday so that water access could be restored, but the Observatory reported a resumption of violence on Saturday. — AFP
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