AFP
BEIRUT, OCTOBER 9
Islamic State group fighters advanced today on Syria’s second city Aleppo despite 10 days of Russian air strikes that Moscow says are aimed at routing the jihadists.The jihadist gains came as regime forces, backed by Russian bombing and fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, intensified an offensive against rebels in the northwest, where IS is absent.
Western governments say the vast majority of Russian strikes have targeted rebel groups other than IS in a bid to defend President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
IS militants reached their closest position yet to Aleppo in northern Syria at dawn on today after hours of ferocious fighting with rival opponents of Assad, a monitoring group reported.
“Dozens of combatants were killed on both sides,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
IS militants drove out rebels from the localities of Tall Qrah, Tall Soussin, Kafar Qares and the base of Madrasat al-Mushat, he said.
The jihadists are now just over 10 kilometres (six mile) from the northern edges of Aleppo city, edging closer to the front line where pro-regime forces are positioned, including the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone.
“IS has never been so close to the city of Aleppo, and this is its biggest advance towards” the country’s pre-war commercial capital, said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group relies on a network of sources on the ground across Syria.
Iranian General Killed
Control of Aleppo city is divided between rebel groups in the east and government forces, bolstered by pro-regime militias, in the west.
IS has not had a presence in the city, but the jihadist group on today boasted it had “reached the gates of Aleppo”.
“IS announced several times that it would launch an offensive on Aleppo without doing it. They were waiting for the right moment and took advance of Russian strikes on other rebels to advance,” said jihadism analyst Romain Caillet.
Thomas Pierret, an expert on Islam in Syria, said the US-led coalition bombing IS in Syria was “not very active” in Aleppo, and that Russia’s strikes there had struck mostly rebels, allowing IS to push forward.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced one of its senior commanders was killed by IS in the Aleppo region on Thursday, without revealing the exact circumstances.
A Guards statement said Hamedani had played an “important role... reinforcing the front of Islamic resistance against the terrorists” but was killed “during an advisory mission”.
Shiite-dominated Iran is a staunch ally of Assad, sending Guards forces and military advisers to aid him against Sunni rebels seeking his overthrow.
Hezbollah has done much of the fighting to prop up Assad’s army, though the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign wing, Qassem Soleimani, is said to be heavily involved in guiding military strategy.
The conflict began as an uprising against Assad’s rule in 2011 but has splintered into a multi-faceted civil war involving government troops, Western-backed rebels, jihadists and Kurdish forces.
Moscow Denies Missile Crash
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said today that “80 to 90 percent” of Russian strikes in Syria were aimed at propping up Assad.
He was speaking after French warplanes carried out new strikes overnight on IS targets in Syria, where Paris launched its first raids on September 27.
According to the Observatory, 14 IS jihadists were killed in the raids, which had struck “a training camp” on the southern edges of Raqa city.
The Russian air war has provided cover for Assad’s ground troops, who have lost swathes of the country to jihadists and rebel groups. The campaign has been critical for the regime’s fight in Sahl al-Ghab, a strategic plain in Hama province that borders both the regime’s coastal bastion of Latakia and the rebel stronghold of Idlib province.
Syria’s army announced a “vast offensive” on Thursday, advancing near Sahl al-Ghab from both the Hama and Latakia fronts with Russian air support.
Moscow denied a claim by a US official that four Syria-bound Russian cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea had crashed in Iran on Wednesday. “Any professional knows that during these operations we always fix the target before and after impact. All our cruise missiles hit their target,” spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said.
Iran declined to confirm the claim by the US official, who did not provide details about where the missiles might have come down or if they caused any damage.
