BEIRUT: Several villages held by Daesh have been captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of militias backed by the United States that includes a strong Kurdish contingent, an organization that monitors the war said on Monday.
The advance is part of a military campaign backed by an international coalition led by the United States to drive Daesh from its Syrian capital of Raqqa. It follows SDF gains against the jihadist group across the north of the country.
The strongest group in the SDF is the People’s Protection Units or YPG, a Kurdish militia, but Washington has said that any operation to retake Raqqa should be predominantly Arab, the ethnicity of most of the city’s residents.
The latest advances in the countryside about 50 km (30 miles) west and northwest of Raqqa follow an earlier phase of SDF gains on another front about 30 km north of the city.
Three SDF soldiers were killed fighting Daesh after the capture of five villages, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Monday.
Daesh had been on the back foot in both Syria and Iraq, where it is under attack in Mosul, its biggest and most important possession, and after a string of US air strikes that have killed many of its leaders this year.
However, earlier this month it launched a surprise attack 160 km southwest of Raqqa to retake the ancient desert city of Palmyra, which it had lost in March to Syrian army forces backed by Russian air power after a nine-month occupation.
That attack demonstrated the risks still posed by the group across Syria even after its territorial losses there since mid-2015, including holdings along the Turkish border which were once its main route for supplies and recruits.
Complicating the efforts against Daesh is a second campaign being waged against it in northwest Syria by Turkey and Syrian rebel groups allied to Ankara. This has taken a large area from the jihadist group but is also aimed at stopping Kurdish expansion.
The Turkish-backed Syrian rebels are now attempting to capture the city of Al-Bab from Daesh, a move that will end Kurdish hopes of uniting their two separated areas of self rule in northern Syria.
Early on Monday, the Turkish military said one of its soldiers had been killed in a car bomb in Al-Bab on Sunday and that 11 militants were also killed in clashes that day.
Kurd-led forces press Daesh near Syria’s Raqqa
Kurd-led forces press Daesh near Syria’s Raqqa
Syrian leader to meet Putin, Russia seeks deal on military bases
- Russia’s continued sheltering of Assad and his wife since their ouster remains a thorny issue
MOSCOW: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa will meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, as the Kremlin seeks to secure the future of its military bases in the country.
Putin and Sharaa struck a conciliatory tone at their previous meeting in October, their first since Sharaa’s rebel forces toppled Moscow-ally Bashar Assad in 2024.
But Russia’s continued sheltering of Assad and his wife since their ouster remains a thorny issue. Sharaa has repeatedly pushed Russia for their extradition.
Sharaa, meanwhile, has embraced US President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday praised the Syrian leader as “highly respected” and said things were “working out very well.”
Putin, whose influence in the Middle East has waned since Assad’s ouster, is seeking to maintain Russia’s military footprint in the region.
Russia withdrew its forces from the Qamishli airport in Kurdish-held northeast Syria earlier this week, leaving it with only the Hmeimim air base and Tartus naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast — its only military outposts outside the former Soviet Union.
“A discussion is planned on the status of bilateral relations and prospects for developing them in various fields, as well as the current situation in the Middle East,” the Kremlin said of the upcoming meeting in a statement on Tuesday.
Russia was a key ally of Assad during the bloody 14-year Syrian civil war, launching air strikes on rebel-held areas of Syria controlled by Sharaa’s Islamist forces.
The toppling of Assad dealt a major blow to Russia’s influence in the region and laid bare the limits of Moscow’s military reach amid the Ukraine war.
The United States, which cheered Assad’s demise, has fostered ever-warmer ties with Sharaa — even as Damascus launched a recent offensive against Kurdish forces long backed by the West.
Despite Trump’s public praise, both the United States and Europe have expressed concern that the offensive in Syria’s northeast could precipitate the return of Islamic State forces held in Kurdish-held jails.
