BEIRUT: The Syrian government on Thursday stepped up its efforts to retake the opposition’s last besieged enclaves, as rebels prepared to withdraw from one and a newspaper reported an ultimatum against another. The IS group, meanwhile, launched a surprise attack near a town in eastern Syria they had lost six months ago, killing at least 25 government forces, a monitor said on Thursday.
At least 13 militants were also killed in the attack which IS carried out near Mayadeen on Wednesday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Also on Thursday, Iraq carried out air strikes on IS positions in Syria a week after Prime Minister Haider al Abadi said his country would defend itself from militant threats across the border.
President Bashar al Assad scored a major victory this month by retaking Eastern Ghouta, the biggest rebel stronghold near Damascus, putting his forces in by far their strongest position since the early months of the seven-year-old civil war. The United States, Britain and France launched a volley of air strikes on Saturday against three Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons strike during the Ghouta assault.
But the limited Western intervention, far from any contested battlefront, has shown no sign of having any impact on the ground, where Assad’s forces have pressed on with his offensive.
The last rebels withdrew from Eastern Ghouta hours after the Western bombing. Since then, the government has focused on regaining four less populous enclaves which have long been under siege.
Their capture would leave the opposition holding only its two main strongholds located in the northwest and southwest along Syria’s international borders.
State television showed live footage of buses entering the town of Dumayr, northeast of Damascus, to bring out fighters and their families, while soldiers stood by the roadside.
Twenty buses would be used to transfer about 5,000 people, including 1,500 rebels of the Jaish al-Islam group, to north Syria, after they surrendered their heavy weapons, Syrian state TV said. A war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there were also talks under way between Russia and rebels for the insurgents to withdraw from an enclave in central Syria around the town of Rastan.
The army was also putting military pressure on rebels in the Eastern Qalamoun enclave, near Dumayr, to start negotiations to withdraw, the Observatory reported.
Separately, the pro-government Al Watan newspaper reported on Thursday that IS militants had been given 48 hours to agree to withdraw from an enclave centred around the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugee south of Damascus.
Iraqi F-16 warplanes crossed into Syria to carry out strikes after coordination with Syrian government, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
“Carrying out air strikes on Daesh gangs in Syrian territories is because of the dangers posed by said gangs to Iraqi territories and is proof of the improved capabilities of our armed forces,” the Iraqi military said in a statement. Earlier this month, Abadi had said Iraq would “take all necessary measures if they threaten the security of Iraq”, referring to the militants who just three years ago overran a third of Iraq.
The prime minister declared final victory over the ultra hardline group in December but it still poses a threat from pockets along the border with Syria and has continued to carry out ambushes, assassinations and bombings across Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said on Thursday that the IS launched a surprise attack near Mayadeen. Mayadeen lies in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor on the western bank of the Euphrates River and is flanked by the vast Badia desert to its west and south.
A military source on Thursday however denied any attack against positions of the Syrian army along the western bank of the Euphrates.
— Reuters/AFP
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