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SYRIA-CONFLICT-JIHADIST,LEAD
IS ambush kills 21 regime fighters in southern Syria: monitor
BEIRUT, Sept 11, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – An ambush by the Islamic State jihadist
group has killed 21 regime fighters in Syria’s southern province of Sweida, a
Britain-based war monitor said on Tuesday.
The attack occurred late Monday in the rural Tulul al-Safa area of the
province, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Damascus, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said.
Eight jihadists were also killed in subsequent clashes in the area, which
is the jihadists’ last bastion in Sweida, the Observatory said.
State news agency SANA reported heavy clashes with IS in the area, adding
that government aircraft and artillery “targeted hideouts and positions” held
by the group.
Government forces have been fighting IS in Sweida’s arid plains since
jihadists carried out a wave of attacks in the mainly Druze province on July
25, killing 250 people according to the Observatory.
During their rampage, which targeted the provincial capital as well as
rural areas, the jihadists also seized around 30 hostages, mostly women and
their children.
At least 27 are believed to still be held, according to Human Rights
Watch, after IS said it had beheaded a 19-year-old man and announced an
elderly woman had died.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the hostages were believed to be
held captive in the Tulul al-Safa area.
A source in Sweida told AFP that families had had no word of their
kidnapped relatives in weeks.
IS has lost nearly all of the great swathes of territory straddling Iraq
and Syria which it seized in 2014, but retains a presence in the vast desert
that lies between Damascus and the Iraqi border, and holds a pocket in the
Euphrates Valley in the east.
A Kurdish-Arab alliance launched an assault on the pocket’s main town of
Hajin on Monday with support from the US-led coalition fighting IS.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1818HRS